Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Freedom
Freedom all solace to man gives:
He lives at ease that freely lives.
John Barbour—The Bruce. Bk. I. 225.
Whose service is perfect freedom.
Book of Common Prayer. Collect for Peace.
…for righteous monarchs,
Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see;
To rule o’er freemen, should themselves be free.
Henry Brooke—Earl of Essex. Act I.
Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant’s unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
Bryant—The Ages. XXXIII.
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto II. St. 76.
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto IV. St. 98.
For Freedom’s battle once begun,
Bequeath’d by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Byron—Giaour. L. 123.
Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed—his people are free.
Byron—Sacred Songs. Sound the loud Timbrel.
Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!
******
O’er Prague’s proud arch the fires of ruin glow.
Campbell—Pleasures of Hope. L. 381.
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.
Lydia Maria Child—Supposititious Speech of James Otis. The Rebels. Ch. IV.
Nulla enim minantis auctoritas apud liberos est.
To freemen, threats are impotent.
Cicero—Epistles. XI. 3.
O what a loud and fearful shriek was there!
…
Ah me! they view’d beneath an hireling’s sword
Fallen Kosciusco.
Coleridge—Sonnet
No, Freedom has a thousand charms to show
That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
Cowper—Table Talk. L. 260.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves besides.
Cowper—Task. Bk. V. L. 733.
I want free life, and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of the whip like shots in battle,
The medley of horns, and hoofs, and heads
That wars, and wrangles, and scatters and spreads;
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash, and danger, and life and love.
F. Desprez—Lasca.
I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
Dryden—Conquest of Granada. Act I. Sc. 1.
My angel,—his name is Freedom,—
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.
Emerson—Boston Hymn.
We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land, or life, if freedom fail?
Emerson—Boston. St. 5.
I gave my life for freedom—This I know;
For those who bade me fight had told me so.
W. N. Ewer—Five Souls.
Bred in the lap of Republican Freedom.
Godwin—Enquirer. II. XII. 402.
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true;
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
Goethe—Faust. Act V. Sc. 6.
Frei athmen macht das Leben nicht allein.
Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live.
Goethe—Iphigenia auf Tauris. I. 2. 54.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod,
They have left unstained, what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God.
Felicia D. Hemans—Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus;
Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis; et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus.
Who then is free? the wise man who is lord over himself;
Whom neither poverty nor death, nor chains alarm; strong to withstand his passions and despise honors, and who is completely finished and rounded off in himself.
Horace—Satires. Bk. II. VII. 83.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Julia Ward Howe—Battle Hymn of the Republic.
One should never put on one’s best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
Ibsen—Enemy of the People.
All we have of freedom—all we use or know—
This our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.
Kipling—The Old Issue.
…That this nation, under God shall have a new birth of freedom.
Abraham Lincoln—Gettysburg Address.
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Abraham Lincoln—Letter to Horace Greeley. Aug. 22, 1862. See Raymond’s History of Lincoln’s Administration.
Freedom needs all her poets; it is they
Who give her aspirations wings,
And to the wiser law of music sway
Her wild imaginings.
Lowell—Memorial Verses. To the Memory of Hood. St. 4.
Quicquid multis peccatur, inultum est.
All go free when multitudes offend.
Lucan—Pharsalia. V. 260.
Libertas ultima mundi
Quo steterit ferienda loco.
The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood.
Lucan—Pharsalia. VII. 580.
Non bene, crede mihi, servo servitur amico;
Sit liber, dominus qui volet esse meus.
Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master.
Martial—Epigrams. II. 32. 7.
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. III. L. 99.
They can only set free men free…
And there is no need of that:
Free men set themselves free.
James Oppenheim—The Slave.
An quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam
Cui licet, ut voluit?
Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?
Persius—Satires. V. 83.
Oh! let me live my own, and die so too!
(To live and die is all I have to do:)
Maintain a poet’s dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please.
Pope—Prologue to Satires. L. 261.
Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a “halter” intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.
Josiah Quincey—Observations on the Boston Port Bill, 1774.
Free soil, free men, free speech, Fremont.
Republican Rallying Cry, 1856.
O, nur eine freie Seele wird nicht alt.
Oh, only a free soul will never grow old!
Jean Paul Richter—Titan. Zykel 140.
Freiheit ist nur in dem Reich der Träume
Und das Schöne blüht nur im Gesang.
Freedom is only in the land of dreams, and the beautiful only blooms in song.
Schiller—The Beginning of the New Century. St. 9.
Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei
Und würd’ er in Ketten geboren.
Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains.
Schiller—Die Worte des Glaubens. St. 2.
Nemo liber est, qui corpori servit.
No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.
Seneca—Epistolæ Ad Lucilium. XCII.
When the mind’s free,
The body’s delicate.
King Lear. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 11.
The last link is broken
That bound me to thee,
And the words thou hast spoken
Have render’d me free.
Fanny Steers—Song.
Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quæ velis, et quæ sentias dicere licet.
Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think.
Tacitus—Annales. I. 1.
Of old sat Freedom on the heights
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights;
She heard the torrents meet.
Tennyson—Of old sat Freedom.
Red of the Dawn
Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall we lay
The ghost of the Brute that is walking and hammering us yet and be free?
Tennyson—The Dawn.
The nations lift their right hands up and swear
Their oath of freedom.
Whittier—Garibaldi.
Freedom exists only where the people take care of the government.
Woodrow Wilson. At the Workingman’s Dinner, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1912.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
Woodrow Wilson—Address to Congress. (War with Germany being declared.) April 2, 1917.
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.
Woodrow Wilson—Address to Congress. (War with Germany being declared.) April 2, 1917.
How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and in that freedom, bold.
Wordsworth—A Poet! He hath put his Heart to School.
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.
Wordsworth—Sonnets to National Independence and Liberty. Pt. XVI.