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Founding Fathers Quotes

All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting
good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to
fix a period after which they should not be imported.
Oliver Ellsworth, The Landholder, December 10, 1787

LXXXII



I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis\'d,

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz\'d

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

  And their gross painting might be better us\'d

  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus\'d.

 	--William Shakespeare

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
T. S. Eliot

And his heart was stirred, it felt a father\'s kindness: such an emotion as the possessor of beauty can
inspire in one who offered himself up in spirit to create beauty. -Thomas Mann, Death in Venice