C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Patriotism
Our country is the common parent of all.
All true patriots will meet in heaven.
The noblest motive is the public good.
I am not a Virginian, but an American.
Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute.
I hope to find my country in the right; however, I will stand by her, right or wrong.
Patriotism is the vital condition of national permanence.
Thank God, I—I also—am an American!
How dear is fatherland to all noble hearts!
One country, one constitution, one destiny.
Who dare to love their country and be poor.
No government is safe unless it is protected by the good will of the people.
The union of hearts, the union of hands, and the flag of our Union forever.
I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American!
Such is the patriot’s boast where’er we roam; his first, best country ever is his own.
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
The love of country is more powerful than reason itself.
He serves his party best who serves the country best.
If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
That grounded maxim, so rife and celebrated in the mouths of wisest men, that to the public good private respects must yield.
We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
The man who loves home best, and loves it most unselfishly, loves his country best.
There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.
Patriotism knows neither latitude nor longitude. It is not climatic.
To be a good patriot, a man must consider his countrymen as God’s creatures, and himself as accountable for his acting towards them.
It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country.
I love my country’s good, with a respect more tender, more holy and profound than my own life.
Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike,***I had rather have eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
Be just, and fear not: let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country’s, thy God’s, and truth’s.
The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
Patriotism depends as much on mutual suffering as on mutual success; and it is by that experience of all fortunes and all feelings that a great national character is created.
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never, never, never.
Patriotism is a blind and irrational impulse unless it is founded on a knowledge of the blessings we are called to secure and the privileges we propose to defend.
This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I have heard something said about allegience to the south: I know no south, no north, no east, no west, to which I owe any allegiance.
In peace patriotism really consists only in this—that every one sweeps before his own door, minds his own business, also learns his own lesson, that it may be well with him in his own house.
This is a maxim which I have received by hereditary tradition, not only from my father, but also from my grandfather and his ancestors, that after what I owe to God, nothing should be more dear or more sacred than the love and respect I owe to my country.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator.
Our country, whether bounded by the St. John and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less—still our country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington—pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria, Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc—romantic devoted, marvelous.
It should be the work of a genuine and noble patriotism to raise the life of the nation to the level of its privileges; to harmonize its general practice with its abstract principles; to reduce to actual facts the ideals of its institutions; to elevate instruction into knowledge; to deepen knowledge into wisdom; to render knowledge and wisdom complete in righteousness; and to make the love of country perfect in the love of man.
Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!
He who loathes war, and will do everything in his power to avert it, but who will, in the last extremity, encounter its perils, from love of country and of home—who is willing to sacrifice himself and all that is dear to him in life, to promote the well-being of his fellow-man, will ever receive a worthy homage.