I went below and fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy carriage and an intelligent face. We were approaching...

Socrates also used to say that there was a quick and short road for those who wanted to attain glory: they would have to make sure that...

Quakers put forth a testimony, dated the 20th of December, signed “John Pemberton,” declaring their attachment to the British government....

Paine quotes from a political statement of the Quakers: “It hath ever been our judgment and principle, since we were called to profess...

There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the Pilgrims had no charity:

The presence of the Negro posed a religious problem for his white owner. If the slave should be converted and baptized, would he not have to be released on the ground that it was immoral to enslave a Christian? The matter was taken to the Virginia Assembly which, in 1667, ruled to the satisfaction of slave holders:

The steep payments he owed British bankers forced Jefferson to retain him enormous workforce of slaves despite his professed hatred for the institution. "The torment of mind I endure till the moment shall arrive when I shall owe not a shilling on earth is such really as to render life of little value," he told his American manager in 1787. But he would not sell land to pay his debts; "nor would I willingly sell the slaves as long as there remains any prospect of paying my deb

Tabling the slavery issue had been a precondition of union in 1787 and now again in 1790. Though a passionate slavery critic, Hamilton knew that this inflammatory issue could wreck the union. He couldn't be both the supreme nationalist and the supreme abolitionist. He certainly couldn't push through his controversial funding program if he stirred up the slavery question, which was probably a futile battle anyway. So this man of infinite opinions grew mute on that all-importa

I believe it is impossible for a man, though he has all the cunning of a devil, to live and die a villain, and yet conceal it so well as to carry the name of an honest fellow to the grave with him, but some one, by some accident or other, shall discover him. Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native luster about them, which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted.

Don’t you know that a good and excellent man does nothing for the sake of appearances, but only for the sake of having acted right?

But if you censure other men while you are hiding a little sweet-cake under your arm, I’ll say to you: Wouldn’t you rather go off into a corner and eat up what you have stolen? What have you to do with other people’s business?

P. For Rabban Gamaliel used to proclaim and say, “Any student whose outside is not like his inside shall not enter the house of study.”