Many magnify in words the importance of public duties, but few appreciate them in feeling; and that, not so much for want of feeling, as for want of … - Henry Taylor

In a statesman’s transactions there are many things which cannot be communicated otherwise than by manner without inconvenient commitment or controversy; and that will be the most serviceable manner which can be expressive or inexpressive at pleasure, and be used as a dark lantern to his meanings.

Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lighting, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.

The pretext for indecisiveness is commonly mature deliberation; but in reality indecisive men occupy themselves less in deliberation than others; for to him who fears to decide, deliberation (which has a foretaste of that fear) soon becomes intolerably irksome, and the mind escapes from the anxiety of it into alien themes.