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
Immeasurably above all the delights of sense is the serene rapture of meditation, the calm ecstasy of pure thought, sounding the depths of its own consciousness, and ruling all else which is subject to man, in the heaven above and the earth beneath, with the sovereign mastery of mind.

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
There are facts in this great and wondrous universe, which it is delightful to trace, though we cannot as yet discern their relations to the service of man.

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
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
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
Unspeakable are the attractions of patient enthusiastic science, now following the traces of creative wisdom, along the minutest fibres of microscopic life, and now clinging to the folds of the streaming robe of Omnipotence, as it floats over the transcendent galaxies of the highest heavens.

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
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
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
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
An earthly immortality belongs to a great and good character. History embalms it; it lives in its moral influence, in its authority, in its example, in the memory of the words and deeds in which it was manifested; and as every age adds to the illustrations of its efficacy, it may chance to be the best understood by a remote posterity.

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
Beneath a free government there is nothing but the intelligence of the people to keep the people's peace. Order must be preserved, not by a military police or regiments of horse-guards, but by the spontaneous concert of a well-informed population, resolved that the rights which have been rescued from despotism shall not be subverted by anarchy.

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
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
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
The telescope may be likened to a wondrous cyclopean eye, endued with superhuman power, by which the astronomer extends the reach of his vision to the further heavens, and surveys galaxies and universes compared with which the solar system is but an atom floating in the air.

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
The admission to Harvard College depends upon examinations; and if this boy passes the examinations, he will be admitted; and if the white students choose to withdraw, all the income of the college will be devoted to his education.

Edward Everett
Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

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
I feel, as never before, how justly, from the dawn of history to the present time, men have paid the homage of their gratitude and admiration to the memory of those who nobly sacrifice their lives, that their fellow-men may live in safety and in honor.

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
I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

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
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