John Lothrop Motley

“Deeds, not words, are the soundest proofs of love.”

“Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.”

“The spirit of liberty is a spirit of compromise.”

“Bigotry is ever the child of ignorance.”

“As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”

“The great lesson of history is that all empires are built on sand.”

“Certainly it is not so easy to be a patriot as to be a cosmopolitan.”

“The cause of freedom, in private life as well as in public transactions, is thus religiously, philosophically, and historically, the cause of progress.”

“The history of the Netherlands is a grand epic.”

“To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony through which the Republic of the Netherlands was ushered into life must have peculiar interest.”