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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Liberty

Give me liberty, or give me death.

Patrick Henry.

Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.

Herbert Spencer.

Liberty must be limited in order to be enjoyed.

Burke.

Nature gives liberty even to dumb animals.

Tacitus.

Liberty, without wisdom, is license.

Burke.

The love of liberty with life is given.

Dryden.

Liberty is a slow fruit.

Emerson.

Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe.

Shakespeare.

Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.

Garfield.

Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth,—the result of free individual action, energy, and independence.

Samuel Smiles.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Burke.

A bird in a cage is not half a bird.

Beecher.

Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.

Shaftesbury.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

John Philpot Curran.

Liberty is worth whatever the best civilization is worth.

Henry Giles.

Perfect love holds the secret of the world’s perfect liberty.

J. G. Holland.

  • A day, an hour of virtuous liberty,
  • Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
  • Addison.

    Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.

    Alfred de Musset.

    The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.

    Thomas Jefferson.

    The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

    Barére.

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

    Daniel Webster.

    Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

    George Washington.

    Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.

    H. W. Shaw.

    The tidal wave of God’s providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe.

    Henry Ward Beecher.

    Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.

    Abraham Lincoln.

    Where liberty dwells, there is my country.

    Benj. Franklin.

    Liberty is from God; liberties from the Devil.

    Auerbach.

    O liberty! liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name.

    Mme. Roland.

    Every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.

    Shakespeare.

    Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.

    Washington.

    Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

    Wendell Phillips.

  • The greatest glory of a free-born people
  • Is to transmit that freedom to their children.
  • Havard.

    Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations.

    Mme. Swetchine.

  • Life is probation: mortal man was made
  • To solve the solemn problem—right or wrong.
  • John Quincy Adams.

    True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all.

    Lord Mansfield.

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

    Daniel Webster.

  • The wish, which ages have not yet subdued
  • In man, to have no master save his mood.
  • Byron.

    Give me the centralism of liberty; give me the imperialism of equal rights.

    Charles Sumner.

    Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure.

    Paley.

    Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.

    Milton.

  • ’Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
  • Of fleeting life its luster and perfume;
  • And we are weeds without it.
  • Cowper.

    There are two freedoms—the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought.

    Charles Kingsley.

    Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.

    Savonarola.

    The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.

    W. G. Simms.

    The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life.

    Bishop Butler.

  • Oh! if there be, on this earthly sphere,
  • A boon, an offering heaven holds dear,
  • ’Tis the last libation Liberty draws
  • From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause.
  • Moore.

    Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail,—strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.

    Ruskin.

  • O liberty,
  • Parent of happiness, celestial born
  • When the first man became a living soul;
  • His sacred genius thou.
  • Dyer.

    Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

    Colton.

    Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.

    Wendell Phillips.

    The people’s liberties strengthen the king’s prerogative, and the king’s prerogative is to defend the people’s liberties.

    Charles I. of England.

    Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

    Bolingbroke.

    Not until right is founded upon reverence will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal.

    Henry Giles.

    Liberty***is one of the choicest gifts that heaven hath bestowed upon man, and exceeds in value all the treasures which the earth contains within its bosom, or the sea covers. Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.

    Cervantes.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

    Thomas Jefferson.

  • But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought
  • Of freedom, in that hope itself possess
  • All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,
  • The scorn of danger, and united hearts,
  • The surest presage of the good they seek.
  • Cowper.

    The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

    Burke.

    The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it may be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.

    Cowley.

    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 other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.

    Daniel Webster.

  • Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
  • Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
  • For there thy habitation is the Heart—
  • The Heart which love of thee alone can bind;
  • And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d—
  • To fetters and the damp vault’s dayless gloom,
  • Their country conquers with their Martyrdom,
  • And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.
  • Byron.

  • Oh! liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright,
  • Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
  • Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
  • And smiling plenty, leads thy wanton train;
  • Eas’d of her load, subjection grows more light
  • And poverty looks cheerful in the sight;
  • Thou mak’st the gloomy face of nature gay,
  • Giv’st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
  • Addison.