Quote#Wisdom
Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural…
Quote byRufus Choate · 1799–1859
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856). Six years earlier, Choate gave a lecture in Providence which was reviewed by Franklin J. Dickman in the Journal of December 14, 1849. Unless Choate used the words "glittering generalities", and Dickman made reference to them, it would seem as if Dickman mus.
English (original)
Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.
— Rufus Choate
More from Rufus Choate
The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.
All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, — every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death ; every life; every success and every failure, — all change, — all permanence, — the …
We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.
The courage of New England was the "courage of conscience." It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.
There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.
Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading.