Chauncey Depew Quotes

If we claim heritage in Bacon, Shakespeare and Milton, we also acknowledge that it was for liberties guaranteed Englishmen by sacred charters our fathers triumphantly fought. While wisely rejecting throne and caste and privilege and an Established Church in their new-born state, they adopted the substance of English liberty and the body of English law.

Neither realism nor romance furnishes a more striking and picturesque figure than that of Christopher Columbus. The mystery about his origin heightens the charm of his story.

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are.

My dinners have never interfered with my business. They have been my recreation ... A public banquet, if eaten with thought and care, is no more of a strain than a dinner at home.

The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.

I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise.

When Franklin drew the lightning from the clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his discovery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the hope and promise of homes and citizenship.

It's pleasant to hear these nice words while I'm still alive. I'd rather have the taffy than the epitaphy.

The tomb of the Saviour was a narrow and empty vault, precious only for its memories of the supreme tragedy of the centuries, but the new continent was to be the home and temple of the living God.

Force was the factor in the government of the world when Christ was born, and force was the source and exercise of authority both by Church and State when Columbus sailed from Palos. The Wise Men traveled from the East toward the West under the guidance of the Star of Bethlehem. The spirit of the equality of all men before God and the law moved westward from Calvary with its revolutionary influence upon old institutions, to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus carried it westward across the seas.

It was for Columbus, when the right hour struck, forced and propelled by this fresh life, to reveal the land where these new principles were to be brought, and where the awaited trial of the new civilization was to be made.

The spirit of Columbus hovers over us to-day.

But the closer we study their lives, and the better we know their deeds, the more profound is our admiration and the greater our reverence for the Pilgrim fathers. Between the drafting of their immortal charter of liberty in the cabin of the Mayflower and the fruition of their principles in the power and majesty of the republic of the United States of to-day is but a span in the records of the word, and yet it is the most important and beneficent chapter in history. To be able to claim descent from them, either by birth or adoption, is to glory in kinship with God's nobility.