DWDaniel Webster

68 collected words

Daniel Webster

Life dates: 1782 AD — 1852 AD

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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Quotations and sayings

01c. 1817 AD

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

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02c. 1817 AD

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

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03c. 1817 AD

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

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04c. 1817 AD

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

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05c. 1817 AD

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

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06c. 1817 AD

On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,—a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.

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07c. 1817 AD

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

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08c. 1817 AD

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

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09c. 1817 AD

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

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10c. 1817 AD

There is nothing so powerful as truth,—and often nothing so strange.

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11c. 1817 AD

Fearful concatenation of circumstances.

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12c. 1817 AD

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.

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13c. 1817 AD

I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.

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14c. 1817 AD

Heaven's gates are not so highly arched as princes' palaces; they that enter there must go upon their knees.

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15c. 1817 AD

Labor is one of the great elements of society,—the great substantial interest on which we all stand.

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16c. 1817 AD

I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American.

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17c. 1817 AD

When labour is employed, labour can consume; when it is not employed, it cannot consume.

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18c. 1817 AD

Farmers are the founders of civilisation.

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19c. 1817 AD

There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.

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20c. 1817 AD

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.

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21c. 1817 AD

But I say to you, and to our whole country, and to all the crowned heads and aristocratic powers and feudal systems that exist, that it is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in the counsels that are to assign the good or evil to all, that we may owe what we are and what we hope to be.

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22c. 1817 AD

Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is triumphing, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.

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23c. 1817 AD

It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means; all its attainments helps to new conquests.

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24c. 1817 AD

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.

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