Edward Everett Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.

Edward Everett
It was appointed by law in Athens, that the obsequies of the citizens who fell in battle should be performed at the public expense, and in the most honorable manner.

Edward Everett
In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion.

Edward Everett
It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great fact is at length discovered, it approves itself at once to all competent judges. It furnishes a solution to so many problems, and harmonizes with so many other facts, — that all the other data as it were crystallize at once about it.

Edward Everett
The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer.

Edward Everett
Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires.

Edward Everett
We are blessed with a faith, which calls into action the whole intellectual man; which prescribes a reasonable service; which challenges the investigation of its evidences; and which, in the doctrine of immortality, invests the mind of man with a portion of the dignity of Divine intelligence.

Edward Everett
The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels, by the laws of the land in which he lives,-by the laws of civilized nations,-he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land which he tills, is, by the constitution of our nature, under a wholesome influence, not easily imbibed from any other source.

Edward Everett
When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.

Edward Everett
Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.

Edward Everett
Universities have been wittily compared to vessels at anchor in the stream of time, serving little purpose but to show with what rapidity independent Research moves down the current.

Edward Everett
We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power.

Edward Everett
[Arithmetic] is another of the great master-keys of life. With it the astronomer opens the depths of the heavens; the engineer, the gates of the mountains; the navigator, the pathways of the deep. The skilful arrangement, the rapid handling of figures, is a perfect magician's wand.

Edward Everett
This glorious union shall not perish! Precious legacy of our fathers, it shall go down honored and cherished to our children. Generations unborn shall enjoy its privileges as we have done; and if we leave them poor in all besides, we will transmit to them the boundless wealth of its blessings!

Edward Everett
Drop a grain of California gold into the ground, and there it will lie unchanged until the end of time;... drop a grain of our blessed gold [wheat] into the ground and lo! a mystery.

Edward Everett
Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.

Edward Everett
Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace or after ages of conflict and war, but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred.

Edward Everett
You shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest,
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was the scourge of God.

Edward Everett
The pen of inspiration, ranging all nature and life for imagery to set forth the Creator's power and wisdom, finds them best symbolized in the skill of the surveyor.

Edward Everett
There were speeches made in Congress in the very last session before the outbreak of the Rebellion, so ferocious as to show that their authors were under the influence of a real frenzy.

Edward Everett
What subsists to-day by violence continues to-morrow by acquiescence and is perpetuated by tradition; till at last the hoary abuse shakes the gray hairs of antiquity at us, and gives it-self out as the wisdom of ages.

Edward Everett
Beyond the little arithmetic required for the ordinary economies of life, the mass of college-bred men, unless engaged in the business of instruction or in pursuits which directly involve their application, from the time they leave their places of education, of whatever name, give up the Mathematics as a useless and hopeless abstraction.

Edward Everett
General Reynolds immediately found himself engaged with a force which greatly outnumbered his own, and had scarcely made his dispositions for the action when he fell, mortally wounded, at the head of his advance.

Edward Everett
Calm and pure the satisfactions of the scholar, who, aloof from the competitions and the prizes, the mean jealousies, the hollow pretences, the brutal vilifyings, the base intrigues, the measureless corruptions of public life, holds converse in his inoffensive seclusion with the unenvious wise and gifted of every country and every age.

Edward Everett
In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths, which existed in the Divine Mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there, when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

Edward Everett