The policy of this country is a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to... any European power.... The capital invested by corporations or citizens of other countries in such an enterprise must in a great degree look for protection to one or more of the great powers of the world. No European power can intervene for such protection without adopting measures on this continent which the United States would deem wholly inadmissible. If the protection of the United States is relied upon, The United States must exercise such control as will enable this country to protect its national interests.... An interoceanic canal across the American Isthmus ... would be the great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and our Pacific shores, and virtually a part of the coastline of the United States. Our merely commercial interest in it is greater than that of all other countries, while its relations to our power and prosperity as a nation, to our means of defense, our unity, peace, and safety, are matters of paramount concern to the people of the United States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of Stat...es. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
lf, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man.... Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man.... Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast, In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such Whether he thinks too little or too much: Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused, or disabused; Created half to rise and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We were soon in the smooth water of the Quakish Lake,... and we had our first, but a partial view of Ktaadn, its summit veiled in ...clouds, like a dark isthmus in that quarter, connecting the heavens with the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the f...act that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »