For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. - Henry David Thoreau

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.