"Patrick Henry" Quotes from Famous Books
... no uncertain voice against the Stamp Act, other colonies were prompt to follow her example, and to prove that they possessed sons no less patriotic. Virginia was as vehement and as vigorous in opposition as Massachusetts. One speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses made the name of Patrick Henry famous. Patrick Henry was a young man who tried many things and failed in them before he found in the practice of the law the appointed task for his rare gifts of reasoning and of eloquence. A speech in Hanover Court House in defence of the ... — A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... made of 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
... the Revolution" in Carolina, he was to his native State what Patrick Henry was to Virginia, in the early days of the Revolution, and what Hancock and Adams were to Massachusetts. His untimely death, in 1775, caused by a fall from a horse, was deeply mourned by patriots ... — In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... correspondent at Key West or Jacksonville. You are the only statesman we have, the only orator Americans will listen to, and I tell you that when you come before them and bring home to them as only you can the horrors of this war, you will be the only man in this country. You will be the Patrick Henry of Cuba; you can go down to history as the man who added the most beautiful island in the seas to the territory of the United States, who saved thousands of innocent children and women, and who dared to do what no other politician has dared to do—to go and see ... — The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 that time. The true patron saints of the black ... — Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... that day, and he had a lingering end as we executed him. I can see "The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled." I can see "Mary's little lamb" come slipping over the stage. I see the tow-headed patriot in "Give me liberty or give me death." I feel now that if Patrick Henry had been present, he would have said, ... — The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... of sixty men, one carries the Stars and Stripes; another a white flag. There is nothing revolutionary about the procession. It is a sharp contrast to the armed force of the Culpepper Minute Men, who, under the leadership of Patrick Henry, marched to Williamsburg, Virginia, to demand instant restoration of powder to an old magazine, or payment for it by the Colonial Governor, Dunmore. The Minute Men carried as their standard a flag bearing the celebrated rattlesnake, and the ... — The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... old St. John's Church—the building in which Patrick Henry delivered his "Give me Liberty or give me Death" oration—are a number of old gravestones bearing strange inscriptions which appeal to the imagination, and also, alas! elicit sad thoughts concerning those who wrote the old-time ... — American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... a long story, but it boils down to this," he said. "I'm looking for a Patrick Henry Considine, but I don't know what he's like. I don't know whether there is such a chap, in fact, but if there is, I've got to find him. A great-uncle of mine died out here a long while ago, and we believe he left a son; and if there is such a son, it turns out that he would be entitled to ... — An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... 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 stronghold of freedom will find him a lion in his path. I have been ... — The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... both, (3) from the fact that the subject of their orations appealed forcibly to the interest of that special time, (4) from their character and personality. Most of what they said makes dry reading to-day, but we shall occasionally find passages, like Patrick Henry's apotheosis of liberty, which speak to the ear of all time and which have in them something of a Homeric or ... — History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... American museums are without one or more examples of his 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 ... — American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... churchman. Richard Henry Lee, who moved the Declaration, was of the family of Richard Lee, who had gone to invite Charles II. to Virginia. Peyton and Edmund Randolph, president of the First Congress, and attorney-general were of the old royalist family. Archibald Cary, who threatened to stab Patrick Henry if he were made dictator, was a relative of Lord Falkland and heir apparent at his death to the barony of Hunsdon. Madison and Monroe were descended from the royalist families—the first from a refugee of 1653, the last from a captain in the army of Charles I., and Patrick ... — The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Page 441. Patrick Henry's celebrated oration is from Sketches of the Life of Patrick Henry, by William Wirt, third edition, corrected by the author, Philadelphia, 1818, which is the first printed version of the speech. No one really knows how much of it is Henry's, how ... — Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... not unreasonable, for his Greek Slave, a beautiful work in marble, had captured the imagination of both American and foreign critics in 1851. Still, Thomas Crawford, his successful competitor, was a sculptor of real gifts, as one may see in his statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Richmond. The work of Allston, Sully, and De Veaux, the painters, was being improved upon by Chester Harding, Eastman Johnson, and William Morris Hunt, all influenced, however, by Turner of England, the Duesseldorf ... — Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... there's so much in it! There's Captain John Smith, and Sir Walter Raleigh, and Jamestown, and Plymouth, and the Pilgrim Fathers, and John Hancock, and Patrick Henry, and George Washington, and the Declaration of Independence, and Bunker's Hill, and Yorktown! Oh!" cried Ishmael with an ... — Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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
... 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 ... — Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the imagination of our countrymen. The literary record of the American conception of liberty runs further back. Some historians have allowed themselves to think that the American notion of liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort of futile echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death"; and not only declamatory, but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for agitators against the Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers like Thomas Paine; ... — The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... 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 ... — Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... noted Puritans had emigrated to Massachusetts and other parts of New England. During the Commonwealth the case was reversed, and numbers of Royalists fled to Virginia. Among them were John Washington, the great-grandfather of George Washington, and the ancestors of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Lees, Randolphs, and other prominent families, destined in time to take part in founding a republic in the New World much more democractic than anything the Old World had ... — The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... 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 ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of Independence and American Revolution develop brave and patriotic leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, John Witherspoon and others, who fight the battles and solve the problems of civil and religious liberty in America. Liberty and independence ... — The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... 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 ... — Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... in life, that 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 ... — Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... 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 ... — Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... a blind conscience which sees nothing, a dead conscience which feels nothing, and a dumb conscience which says nothing, is in as miserable a condition as a man can be on this side of hell. —PATRICK HENRY. ... — Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... colonial who led our rebellion against the very royalty that founded the Academy. The public-speaking American wrote the Declaration of Independence. It was not the work of the painting or cathedral-building Englishman. We were led by Patrick Henry, the orator, ... — The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... and as a result frequent personal encounters took place between aroused partisans. Marshall's election by a narrow majority in a borough which was strongly pro-Jeffersonian was due, indeed, not to his principles but to his personal popularity and to the support which he received from Patrick Henry, the former Governor ... — John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... Captain Eri's friend, a friendship that had begun in school when the declaimer of Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech on Examination Day took a fancy to and refused to laugh at the little chap who tremblingly ventured to assert that he loved "little Pussy, her coat is so warm." The two had changed places until now it was Captain Eri who ... — Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... denounced the measure in the strongest language, and displayed strong feelings of dislike to it. Nay, the Assembly of Virginia, which hitherto had been pre-eminent in loyalty, was now the first to set an example of disobedience. The House of Assembly there was shaken by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, who took the lead in the debate. In a resolution which he brought forward against the Stamp Act, Henry exclaimed—"Caesar had his Brutus; Charles I. his Oliver Cromwell; and George III."—the orator at this point was interrupted by a voice crying ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... policy which bestowed all political honors on the 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. ... — The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... Period. Party Literature. Benjamin Franklin. Revolutionary Poetry. The Hartford Wits. Trumbull's M'Fingal. Freneau. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Citizen Literature. James Otis and Patrick Henry. Hamilton and Jefferson. Miscellaneous Writers. Thomas Paine. Crevecoeur. Woolman. Beginning of American Fiction. Charles Brockden Brown. Summary of the ... — Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll back and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves at Arlington, ... — Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Patrick Henry, "the forest-born Demosthenes," as Lord Byron called him, was defending an army commissary, who, during the distress of the American army in 1781, had seized some bullocks belonging to John Hook, a wealthy Scottish settler. The seizure was not quite legal, but Henry, defending, ... — Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... William and Mary College for two years. Here he strove to cultivate friendly feelings with all whom he met, with excellent success, becoming very popular with both companions and teachers. It was while a student that he heard the famous speech of Patrick Henry; and those immortal words, "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH," seemed to kindle within him a patriotic spirit which grew until it burst forth in that noble statue to his memory,—the Declaration of Independence, ... — Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... includes the names of 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 said he never took cold in his head, but that the ... — The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... annunciation that a consolidated power had been inaugurated, whose subject comprehended an empire, and which had no restriction but the discretion of Congress. This disturbing element of the Union entirely escaped the apprehensive previsions of Samuel Adams, George Clinton, Luther Martin, and Patrick Henry; and, in respect to dangers from power vested in a central Government over distant settlements, colonies, or provinces, their instincts were always alive. Not a word escaped them, to warn their countrymen, ... — Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... 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 ... — The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... Act, and the similar acts which followed it, united the colonies in a spirit of resistance. They inspired Patrick Henry's eloquence in Virginia; they gave rise to the "tea-party" in Boston; they produced the Boston massacre; they led to the burning of the Gaspee in Narragansett Bay; they finally developed, no longer rioting, but open and flagrant rebellion ... — The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... 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 has shown himself ... — The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... that happened to land on thy coasts, while thy laws continue a traffic whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that is entailed on their posterity." "A serious view of this subject," said Patrick Henry in 1773, "gives a gloomy prospect to future times." In the same year George Mason wrote to the legislature of Virginia: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge our injustice upon our posterity." Conforming his conduct to his convictions, Jefferson, in Virginia, ... — Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... he visited his white friends at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant), and was retained as one of several hostages for the tribe. Infuriated at some murders in the vicinity, the private soldiers in the fort turned upon the Indian prisoners and basely killed them, Cornstalk among the number. Governor Patrick Henry and General Hand—the latter then organizing his futile expedition against the Shawnees—wished to punish the murderers; but in the prevalent state of public opinion on the border, it was easy for them to escape ... — Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... 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 full, it must run over before we undertake to frame a government." ... — Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... Almanac," honest and wholesome in tone, exercised a marked influence upon the literature of his time. Among the orators who won distinction in the discussion of civil liberty are James Otis, John and Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry. The writings of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison in The Federalist secured the adoption of the Constitution and survive to this day as brilliant examples of political essays, while the state papers of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are models of ... — Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... wisest and greatest of men were eminent lawyers, and he thought nothing of the moral dangers of the law as a profession. He had never been even in a magistrate's court, but he had heard the legends and traditions of the advocates; had read that eminent fiction, Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, and a volume of Charles Phillips's speeches, and had felt that strong inner going forth of the soul that yearned to find utterance in ... — Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... one of several delegates chosen to represent Virginia in the General Congress, which was held at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, September 5, 1774. There were fifty-two members, the ablest men of all the colonies. Someone asked Patrick Henry who was the greatest man among them and he said, "Colonel Washington, if you speak of solid information and sound judgment." These men met, not as members of separate colonies, but as Americans with one country and one cause. Each meeting was opened with ... — George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... is ever influenced mightily by the past. Patrick Henry spoke with great wisdom when he declared to the Continental Congress, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience." Mankind is finite. It has the limits of all things finite. The processes of government are subject to the same ... — Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... of the State, and one hundred dollars if taken in the State. To ride in a stage, with a man behind, whose legs and arms were fastened together with rivetted chains and padlocks, was enough to make one feel the force of Patrick Henry's exclamation, 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' It was a poor consolation to administer to the gnawings of his hunger, while beholding his manly frame thus manacled: but I thought he seemed to eat my gingerbread with a better relish, when ... — A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... of many of the great orators of the age of the Revolution are not preserved, and are known only by tradition. Of the eloquence of Otis, which was described as "flames of fire," there are but a few meagre reports; the passionate appeals of Patrick Henry and of the elder Adams, which "moved the hearers from their seats," and the resistless declamation of Pinkney and Rutledge, are preserved only in the history of the effects which ... — Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... petition to the Virginia Assembly. Clark was one of them. The journey to Williamsburg was long and arduous, and the delegates arrived only to find that the Legislature had adjourned. The visit, none the less, gave Clark an opportunity to explain to the new Governor—"a certain Patrick Henry, of Hanover County," as the royalist Dunmore contemptuously styled his successor—the situation in the back country and to obtain five hundred pounds of powder. He also induced the authorities to take steps which led to the definite ... — The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... were of old English stock, some of whom at least were found on the side 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 ... — The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... In the Assembly of Virginia, one of the members—Patrick Henry—after declaiming with bitterness against the supposed arbitrary measures of the present reign, exclaimed, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Oliver Cromwell, and George III.—" A cry of "Treason!" ... — The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... principles for which, at that moment, a liberty-loving people were battling with their lives. He succeeded, because he wrote the Declaration while his heart burned with that same patriotic fire which Patrick Henry so eloquently expressed when he said: "I care not what others may do, but as for me, give me ... — The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... supposed, left Ireland in no very good temper with the rulers of Great Britain, afterwards supplied the most military and the most determined element in Washington's armies, and gave to the Republic some of its most striking historical personalities: Patrick Henry and John Caldwell Calhoun, Jackson, the great President, and his namesake the brilliant ... — A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... impeachment against England, they specified eighteen grievances. When the women of this country surveyed the situation in their first convention, they found they had precisely that number, and quite similar in character; and reading over the old revolutionary arguments of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Otis, and Adams, they found they applied remarkably well to their case. The same arguments made in this country for extending suffrage from time to time, to white men, native born citizens, without property and education, and to foreigners; the same used by John Bright ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Stamp Act began in Virginia, where the House of Burgesses passed a set of resolutions written by Patrick Henry. [7] In substance they declared that the colonists were British subjects and were not bound to obey any law taxing them without the consent ... — A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... he shall be taken care of than to tell him that he must shift for himself. As for the effect upon the individual, it is a lowering medicine, making the patient gradually dependent upon the drug, and bringing him finally to the incurable invalidism of surly apathy. To change Patrick Henry's fiery peroration slightly: Give me liberty or in the end you give ... — Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... 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, ... — The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various |