"Patrick Henry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general. Then came the days when the struggle for the rights of man was arousing the civilized world. After 1760 the nascent social doctrine found response among the American colonists. They looked with opened eyes at the Negroes. A new day then dawned for the dark-skinned race. Men like Patrick Henry and James Otis, who demanded liberty for themselves, could not but concede that slaves were entitled at least to freedom of body. The frequent acts of manumission and emancipation which followed upon this change in attitude toward persons of color, turned loose upon ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... three and began a compendium of universal history at seven. Although not a lover of books, George Washington early read Matthew Hale and became a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of fourteen he could repeat from memory all of Watt's Hymns and Pope's ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... of 1777 the English decided to attack Fort Henry, at Wheeling, in northwestern Virginia. This was an important border fort named in honor of Patrick Henry, and around which had grown up a small village of about twenty-five ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... of original, independent, manly, intellectual activity. It was an age of great men, both in this country and England. It could boast of the Pitts, Burke, Fox and Sheridan; of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, the Adamses, Patrick Henry and the Lees. It was an age of useful intelligence, of eminent practical wisdom. The leading minds of a country to some extent represent its general characteristics. A popular sentiment which sustained with fidelity the measures of non- intercourse, of resistance and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... of literary beauty is found in a worthy expression of noble thought and sentiment. This may be regarded as the soul of enduring literature, and it is as exhaustless as the human mind itself. The dauntless love of liberty that breathes through Patrick Henry's famous speech is thrilling in its eloquence: "What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... product. In the public square at Richmond, Virginia, stands one of his most important monuments, crowned by an astonishing equestrian figure of Washington, which he himself executed. Two of the subordinate statues are also his—those of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson—and represent the best work he ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... American opinion was in the process of making—an independent opinion nourished by the press and enriched by discussions around the fireside and at the taverns. When the day of resistance to British rule came, government by opinion was at hand. For every person who could hear the voice of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, there were a thousand who could see their appeals on the printed page. Men who had spelled out their letters while poring over Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac lived to read Thomas ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Company, and the James River Company were among those organizations for transportation which Washington aided for the opening up of the country. There was a recognition of his services to the country, and the legislature of Virginia in 1785, through Patrick Henry, then Governor, gave Washington fifty shares in the Potomac and Virginia Company, and one hundred shares in the James River Company. Washington replied that he had resolutely shut his hand against every pecuniary recompense during the revolutionary struggle; and that he could not change that ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... born, perhaps, of human frailty. How happens it that James Otis laid out in 1762 the then almost treasonable proposition that "Kings were made for the good of the people, and not the people for them," in a pamphlet which was circulated among the Colonists? What school had taught Patrick Henry that national outlook which he expressed in the opening debates of the first Continental Congress when he said, "I am not a Virginian, but an American," and which hurried him on to the later cry of "Liberty or death?" How was it that the filling of a vacancy sent Thomas ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... thousands, representing every profession and vocation. Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Pliny, Maecenas, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Dante, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Israel Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry—these geniuses all were bald. But the baldest of all was the philosopher Hobbes, of whom the revered John Aubrey has recorded that "he was very bald, yet within dore he used to study and sitt bare-headed, and ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... something longed for and striven for. Demosthenes, on the beach, struggling with the pebbles in his mouth to perfect his articulation, has been the great example. Yet it is often true of the orator, as of the poet; nascitur non fit. Patrick Henry seemed to be inspired as "Give me liberty or give me death" rolled from his lips. The untutored savage ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... best collection extant, of Pieces for Declamation, New Dialogues, &c. Illustrated with excellent likenesses of Charbam, Mirabeau, Webster, Demosthenes, Cicero, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Curran, Sheridan, Madame Roland, Victor Hugo, Calhoun, Hayne, Everett, Tennyson, Longfellow. O. W. Holmes, Bret Harte, Epes Sargent, Thackeray, Dickens, and ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... that not of the revealer, but the scholar to the last. He imparted what he learned; he knew what he had been told. His delivery was not, like Patrick Henry's, a bolt from Heaven to rend the obstacle and burn up opposition, but a crystal stream flowing smoothly from some rock that had garnered up the mountain-dew and the rain; and he completely informed if he did not like Fisher Ames ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... in New York the visiting English writer and wit, G.K. Chesterton, protested against prohibition and other limitations on American freedom. He quoted the phrase from Patrick Henry's address, "Give me liberty or give ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... was one of the noble assertors of English liberty who dared to oppose a weak, but cruel and capricious tyrant. If ever a monarch was a tyrant and despot, it was the first Charles. No American citizen who thinks that Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington were praiseworthy for the resistance which they offered to the aggressions of George III., can for one moment fail to reverence Eliot, Hampden, Marten, Whalley, Ludlow, Pym, and Cromwell for their noble opposition ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front, gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter of Kentucky," and the Constitution said the next day: "If the spirit of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman Suffrage in the South, Mrs. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... knowledge and good nature, was the president of that university. Its professors were the cluster of able men who had gone along with Washington and Jefferson in the measures which resulted in the independence of the country. Patrick Henry was there to teach him the arts of oratory. There was a flourishing and famous debating society, the pride of the young men of Richmond, in which to try his half-fledged powers. The impulse given to thought by the American Revolution was quickened and prolonged by the thrilling news which every ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... but had to turn our backs at last; and as we recrossed the pontoon bridge we wiped off from the soles of our feet a large portion of the sacred soil of Virginia. Yes, the sacred soil of Virginia, the mother of presidents, the home of Washington, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Madison, and of how many others famous in our history. O Virginia, what a contrast is there now! the blood of thy boasted chivalry struggling manfully stains the ground; thy soil is ground to powder under the heel of the hated mudsils of the North; thy fertile plains ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the rollicking Patrick Henry came along. Patrick played the violin, and so did Thomas. These two young men had first met on a musical basis. Some otherwise sensible people hold that musicians are shallow and impractical; and I know one man who declares that truth and honesty and uprightness ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... counted, I know not how many slaves upon his plantation, confessed on his death-bed, that his licentiousness had extended to every adult female amongst them. This planter was a near relative of the celebrated Patrick Henry. It may be, that you have planters in Mississippi and Louisiana, who avail themselves to the extent that he did, of the power which slaveholding gives to pollute and destroy. The hundreds of thousands of mulattoes, who constitute the Southern ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... our national liberty after he avowed his irreligious principles." Neither was he the first to raise the voice in favor of national liberty. Ten years before he wrote his work entitled "Common Sense," at the suggestion of Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush, which was in 1776, Patrick Henry's voice was heard amid the assembled colonists in Virginia. He said: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.—" Just then some one cried out, "Treason!" After a pause, Henry added,—"may profit by their example." Years before Tom Paine came to America, ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. Catherine's family at one time lived on the South Branch of the Potomac, although at the time of her marriage her home was near Wheeling. Captain Ogle's commission, signed by Gov. Patrick Henry, is now a valued possession of one of Mrs. Lemen's descendants. James and Catherine Lemen were well fitted by nature and training for braving the hardships and brightening the privations of life on the frontier, far removed from home and friends, or even ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... slavery upon population and the production of wealth; and in 1761 James Otis, in his argument against the Writs of Assistance, spoke so vigorously of the rights of black men as to leave no doubt as to his own position. To Patrick Henry slavery was a practice "totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong," and in 1777 he was interested in a plan for gradual emancipation received from his friend, Robert Pleasants. Washington desired nothing more than "to see some plan adopted ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... she was connected by blood with one of the first families of Virginia, told the Commissioner that she had chosen an Assistant, a young lady of high qualifications, and as she understood, a descendant of Patrick Henry. ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Roger Sherman and George Mason were the greatest statesmen he ever knew. This statement, published in the life of Mason, was carefully verified for me by my friend, the late William Wirt Henry, grandson and biographer of Patrick Henry, as appears by a letter from ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... shrink from the imputation upon the colonial church of Maryland and Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it would have been considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity of the English church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, culminating in Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far Americanized the Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome minister was ever to be forced from outside on one of its parishes. After the Revolution it became possible ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... The correspondence relating to the Conway Cabal is given entire in the Appendix to the fifth volume of Sparks' "Writings of Washington." It is very curious and interesting. Among other letters are anonymous ones addressed to Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, and to Mr. Laurens, President of Congress, full of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... separately." Excellently spoken, Doctor! And that homely, cheery, daring sentence gives the keynote of much of the Revolutionary writing that has survived. It may be heard in the state papers of Samuel Adams, the oratory of Patrick Henry, the pamphlets of Thomas Paine, the satires of Freneau and Trumbull, and in the subtle, insinuating, thrilling ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... descendants of a few wealthy families living upon the tide or along the banks of the larger streams. They were, therefore, inclined to advance with quick pace toward revolution.[14] On finding such leaders as James Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, the frontiersmen instituted such a movement in behalf of freedom that it resulted in the Revolutionary War.[15] These patriots' advocacy of freedom, too, was not half-hearted. When they demanded ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... go to School with his Face scrubbed to a shiny pink and his Hair roached up on one side, and he would Recite the Speeches of Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... the people there are still French. My men brought back word that the French feared the Long Knives, as the Indians call us. On the first of October I went to Virginia, and some of you thought again that I had deserted you. I went to Williamsburg and wrestled with Governor Patrick Henry and his council, with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Mason and Mr. Wythe. Virginia had no troops to send us, and her men were fighting barefoot with Washington against the armies of the British king. But the governor gave me twelve hundred pounds in paper, and with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... new material, a picturesque yet delicate style, good plot and very dramatic situations. The best in the book are the defense of George Washington by the Marquis; the duel between the English officer and the Marquis; and Patrick Henry flinging the brand of war into the assembly of the burgesses of Virginia. Williamsburgh, Virginia, the country round about, and the life led in that locality just before the Revolution, form an attractive setting for ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... nemine contra dicente, That we cordially approve the conduct of our countrymen, Captain Patrick Henry, and the other volunteers of Hanover County, who marched under him, in making reprisals on the King's property for the trespass committed as aforesaid, and that we are determined to hazard all the ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... you know the French and Indian war has left both England and her colonies in debt and King George, thinking only of England, put a tax on tea and a Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies. Through such great men as Samuel Adams and our own Patrick Henry, these Acts have been repealed. Now we are confronted with the trouble in Boston. Shall the people of Boston be slaves or shall the thirteen colonies fight to save ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... lovely woman for you, Ned, in the bud, 'tis true, but likely to blossom into a perfect rose. There is but one beauty in all Paris to compare with her, I think. And that is the sister of your old friend d'Azay. And what does Patrick Henry and Pendleton these days? I hear that Hamilton holds strange views about the finances and has spoken of them freely in Congress. What are they? My letters give me no details as yet." And more and more questions during the abundant breakfast ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the Irishmen, it seems that they marched in a wild and cursing mob to the churchyard of old St. John's where Patrick Henry hurled his famous defiance at the British and in the same spirit—"Give me liberty or give me death"—they fought until they could ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... hopes that our late foe, Mr. Sterrett, will not take offense at our enthusiasm. He sets down his bottle and shakes Sterrett's hand. 'As white man to white man,' says he, 'denude our uproar of the slightest taint of personality. Excuse us for Bunker Hill, Patrick Henry, and Waldorf Astor, and such grievances as might lie ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... in oratory with the Adamses, the Randolphs, James Otis and Patrick Henry, who were contemporaneous with him. He was, therefore, not by nature great in the sphere of oratory, and in his public utterances he does not always show the habit of radical thought which gave the great Democratic party, which lived and ruled our country throughout the larger part ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... democratic frontier people—Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and other sects,[94:1] out of sympathy with the established church and the landed gentry of the lowlands. This society in which he was born, was to find in Jefferson a powerful exponent of its ideals.[94:2] Patrick Henry was born in 1736 above the falls, not far from Richmond, and he also was a mouthpiece of interior Virginia in the Revolutionary era. In short, a society was already forming in the Virginia Piedmont which was composed of many sects, of independent ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... present city of Wheeling. The fort is said to have been planned by General George Rogers Clarke; and was constructed by Ebenezer Zane and John Caldwell. When first erected, it was called Fort Fincastle but the name was afterwards changed in compliment to Patrick Henry the renowned orator ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... fears during this critical period of our history, we have the report that it was actually claimed and believed by many at that time that the Federalists had the secret intention of inviting over to our country some European prince who should rule as king. Patrick Henry cried, "We shall have a king; the army will salute him monarch." Though not fixed by the Constitution, it has been since the time of Washington the invariable rule that no man shall be elected for more than two terms. The friends of President Grant attempted to ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may have been Thomas Jefferson; it may have been Samuel Adams; it may have been his cousin; it may have been Thomas Paine; it may have been Patrick Henry; it may have been James Otis, the subject of ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the same year, 1775, in which Burke's magnificent "Conciliation" oration was delivered, Patrick Henry made a remarkable little speech before a gathering of delegates in Virginia. Both men were pleading the same cause of justice, and were actuated by the same high ideals. A very interesting contrast, however, may be drawn between the methods and the effects of Henry's speech and of Burke's more ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Virginians made a law regulating the salaries of clergymen in the colony. The king vetoed the law. The Virginians paid no heed to the veto. The clergy men appealed to the courts and the case of one of them was selected for trial. Patrick Henry, a prosperous young lawyer, stated the opinions of the Virginians in a speech which made his reputation. The king, he said, had no right to veto a Virginia law that was for the good of the people. To do so was an act of tyranny, and the people ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... artificial kings. The orator is God's natural king, divinely enthroned. Back of all eloquence is a great soul, a great cause and a great peril. Our history holds three supreme moments in the story of eloquence—the hour of Patrick Henry's speech at Williamsburg, Wendell Phillips' at Faneuil Hall and Lincoln's at Gettysburg. The great hour and the great crisis, the great cause and the great man, all met and melted together at a psychologic moment. In retrospect ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... fifty-five delegates, from eleven colonies, met in Smith's tavern, Philadelphia, and at the invitation of the carpenters of that city adjourned to their hall. Questions arose as to the numerical influence of the colonies. Patrick Henry voiced the sentiment of Congress, "I am not a Virginian, I am an American." John Jay, who represented the conservative element said, "We have not come to make a constitution; the measure of arbitrary power is not ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... The eloquence of Patrick Henry and the logic and philosophy of Madison and Jefferson rang in the ears of the people of the slave-holding States, and they paused to think. In forty years the Negro population of Virginia had increased 186 per cent.—from ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... industrious freeholder. Nor were all the settlers of the Virginia back country emancipated servants. In 1732 Peter Jefferson patented a thousand acres at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was in this frontier community above the Fall Line that Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were born; here they grew to manhood; here they were inspired with those ideals of society so inimical alike to the imperial designs of the British Government and to the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Republican, who will worthily represent Posey County in field and forum. He points with pride to a stainless record in the halls of legislation, which have often echoed to his soul-stirring eloquence on questions which lie at the very foundation of popular government. He has been called the Patrick Henry of Hardpan, where he has done yeoman's service in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Mr. Briller left for Distilleryville last evening, and the standard bearer of the Democratic host confronting that ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... most important of all the livestock, she christened George Washington. The pig was named Patrick Henry. The largest hen was Martha Washington. "As to them two roosters," she explained, "I did think I'd name the big handsome one John Hancock and the littlest one George Three. They didn't like each other, ma'am, that was ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of State went a-begging. It was offered to William Paterson of New Jersey, to Thomas Johnson of Maryland, to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, but all these men declined. Washington got word that Patrick Henry, the old antagonist of the Constitution, was showing Federalist leanings in opposition to Jefferson and Madison, and Henry was then tendered the appointment, but he too declined. Others were approached but all refused, and meanwhile Pickering, though ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... "Nothing like an understanding at the beginning; yes, the old lady's right. Good thing to know what the trouble is, so we'll know how it'll hit us. I guess I'm the trouble for this house, but I'm going to hit it as the daughter of an old friend, and not as a servant. I'm just about as independent as Patrick Henry, Miss Noir. I'm not responsible for being born, but it's my outlook to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the background for the panorama of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... examining fully on every side. In the first part of this interval, struck with astonishment, they lay in silent consternation, and could not determine what course to pursue. By degrees they recovered their recollection. Virginia led the way in opposition to the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry, on May 29, 1765, brought into the House of Burgesses of that colony vigorous resolutions, which were substantially ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... people beat as with one pulsation. Sectional differences were forgotten. The bold notes of defiance uttered in New England and New York were caught up and echoed with manifold vehemence in Virginia. Patrick Henry, the idle boy of Hanover, had just burst from the chrysalis of obscurity, and was enchanting his countrymen with the brilliancy of his eloquence. He had been but a few days a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, when intelligence of the passage of the Stamp Act reached the Old Dominion. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... is so excited as to forget every thing but the matter on which his mind and feelings are acting, the whole body is affected, and helps to propagate his emotions to the hearer. Amidst all the exaggerated colouring of Patrick Henry's biographer, there is doubtless enough that is true, to prove a power in the spontaneous energy of an excited speaker, superior in its effects to any thing that can be produced by writing. Something of the same sort has been witnessed by every one who ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... of Limestone Creek, which comes gently down from low-lying hills, was regarded as a convenient doorway into Kentucky. When (1776) George Rogers Clark was coming down the river from Pittsburg, with powder given by Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, for the defence of Kentucky settlers from British-incited savages, he was chased by the latter, and, putting into this creek, hastily buried the precious cargo on its banks. From here it was cautiously taken overland to the little forts, by relays of pioneers, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... Killiow, died in 1822, and his brother, Patrick Henry, succeeded to the title and estates. Martin Rosewarne retained his stewardship. To be sure he made an obliging steward. He saw that the man must go his own gait, and also that he was drinking himself to death. So where a timid ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
