Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
America
E pluribus unum.
From many, one.
Motto of the United States of America. First appeared on title page of Gentleman’s Miscellany, Jan., 1692. Pierre Antoine (Peter Anthony Motteaux) was editor. Dr. Simetiere affixed it to the American National Seal at time of the Revolution. See Howard P. Arnold Historical Side Lights.
Ex pluribus unum facere.
From many to make one.
St. Augustine—Confessions. Bk. IV. 8. 13.
Yet, still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
“We are one!”
W. Allston—America to Great Britain.
Asylum of the oppressed of every nation.
Phrase used in the Democratic platform of 1856, referring to the U. S.
O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot’s devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
An adaptation of Shaw’s Britannia.
America! half brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. The Surface. L. 340.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Burke—Speech on Conciliation with America. Works. Vol. II.
Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
Burke—Speech on Conciliation with America. Works. Vol. II.
I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
George Canning—The King’s Message. Dec. 12, 1826.
The North! the South! the West! the East!
No one the most and none the least,
But each with its own heart and mind,
Each of its own distinctive kind,
Yet each a part and none the whole,
But all together form one soul;
That soul Our Country at its best,
No North, no South, no East, no West,
No yours, no mine, but always Ours,
Merged in one Power our lesser powers,
For no one’s favor, great or small,
But all for Each and each for All.
Edmund Vance Cooke—Each for All, in The Uncommon Commoner.
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies!
Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold,
While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.
Timothy Dwight—Columbia.
Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose,
And new eras in their brains.
Sam Walter Foss—The Coming American.
Wake up America.
Augustus P. Gardner—Speech, Oct. 16, 1916.
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast;
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tost.
Felicia D. Hemans—Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heavenborn band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause.
Joseph Hopkinson—Hail Columbia.
America is a tune. It must be sung together.
Gerald Stanley Lee.—Crowds. Bk. V. Pt. III. Ch. XII.
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Longfellow—Building of the Ship. L. 367.
Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of a nation!
Longfellow—Courtship of Miles Standish. Pt. V. St. 2.
Earth’s biggest Country’s gut her soul
An’ risen up Earth’s Greatest Nation.
Lowell—The Biglow Papers. Second Series. No. 7. St. 21.
When asked what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He comes from Appomattox
And its famous apple tree.
Miles O’Reilly—Poem quoted by Roscoe Conkling. June, 1880.
Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
Wendell Phillips—Speech at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth, Dec. 21, 1855.
Give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea will upheave the continent.
Wendell Phillips—Speech. New York, Jan. 21, 1863.
We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.
Theodore Roosevelt.
My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,—
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring.
Sam’l F. Smith—America.
In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?
Sydney Smith—Works. Vol. II. America. (Edinburgh Review, 1820.)
Gigantic daughter of the West
We drink to thee across the flood….
For art not thou of English blood?
Tennyson—Hands all Round. (In the Oxford Tennyson.) (Appeared in the Examiner, 1862; The London Times, 1880.)
So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and I long to be
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars.
Henry Van Dyke—America for Me.
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
Oscar Wilde—A Woman of no Importance. Act I.
Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
Woodrow Wilson—Address. Unveiling of the Statue to the Memory of Commodore John Barry, Washington, May 16, 1914.
Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.
Woodrow Wilson—Speech. Pittsburgh, Jan. 29, 1916.
We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise. That common enterprise is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right. And, therefore, I, for my part, have a great enthusiasm for rendering America spiritually efficient; and that conception lies at the basis of what seems very far removed from it, namely, the plans that have been proposed for the military efficiency of this nation.
Woodrow Wilson—Speech. Pittsburgh, Jan. 29, 1916.
Home from the lonely cities, time’s wreck, and the naked woe,
Home through the clean great waters where freemen’s pennants blow,
Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go.
George E. Woodberry—Homeward Bound.
We must consult Brother Jonathan.
Washington’s familiar reference to his secretary and Aide-de-camp, Col. Jonathan Trumbull.