My desire is that your office [the New York Customhouse] shall be conducted on strictly business principles.... In making appointm...ents and removals of subordinates, you should be perfectly independent of mere influence. Neither my recommendation, nor that of the Secretary of the Treasury, nor the recommendation of any Member of Congress, or other influential person, should be specially regarded. Let appointments and removals be made ... by fixed rules.... Let no man be put out merely because he is a friend of the late collector [Chester A. Arthur], and no man be put in merely because he is our friend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It would be but a wretched compliment of condolence to offer to a queen of China, or Japan, or India, Scythia, or Gothia, who had ...just lost her infant son to say: "Be comforted, madam; his highness the prince royal is now in the clutches of five hundred devils, who turn him round and round in a great furnace to all eternity, while his body rests embalmed and in peace within the precincts of your palace." The astonished and terrified queen inquires why these devils should eternally roast her dear son, the prince royal. She is answered that the reason of it is that his great-grandfather formerly ate of the fruit of knowledge in a garden. Form an idea, if possible, of the looks and thoughts of the king, the queen, the whole council, and all the beautiful ladies of the court.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well may Mr. [David] Garrick be so celebrated, so universally admired--I had not any idea of so great a performer. Such ease! such... vivacity in his manner! such grace in his motions! such fire and meaning in his eyes!--I could hardly believe he had studied a written part, for every word seemed uttered from the impulse of the moment. ... his voice--so clear, so melodious, yet so wonderfully various in its tones!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the cour...t; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty's torch. In football you run over somebody's face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I suppose you all realize that as members of the court marshall for the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of our belo...ved president you have on your souls a grave responsibility. The object of this trial is not to determine the guilt or innocence of a handful of rebels but to save this country from further bloodshed. The solemn truth, gentlemen, is that the federal union is on the verge of hysteria. That is why the trial of these conspirators has been placed in your hands rather than in a civil court. Because men of the sword can be hard, and hardness is all that can save this country from riot, mob rule, even resumption of the war itself.... To help you to be hard, first, you must not allow your judgement in decision in this case to be troubled by any trifling technicalities of the law or any pedantic regard for the customary rules of evidence. Second, and most important, you must not allow yourself to be influenced by that obnoxious creation of legal nonsense--reasonable doubt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not pl...ay so many games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As each Sister is to become a Co-Worker of Christ in the slums, each ought to understand what God and the Missionaries of Charity ...expect from her. Let Christ radiate and live his life in her and through her in the slums. Let the poor, seeing her, be drawn to Christ and invite him to enter their homes and their lives. Let the sick and suffering find in her a real angel of comfort and consolation. Let the little ones of the streets cling to her because she reminds them of him, the friend of the little ones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The decision of the Supreme Court in the income taxes cases deprived the National Government of a power which, by reasons of previ...ous decisions of the court, it was generally supposed that Government had. It is undoubtedly a power the National Government ought to have.... I therefore recommend to the Congress that both Houses, by a two-thirds vote, shall propose an amendment to the Constitution conferring the power to levy an income tax upon the National Government without apportionment among the States in proportion to population ... and second, the enactment, as part of the pending revenue measure, either as a substitute for, or in addition to, the inheritance tax, an excise tax upon all corporations, measured by 2 percent of their net income.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;... Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »