American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Ormsby Macknight Mitchel (July 28, 1809-October 30, 1862) was an American astronomer and a Major-General in the Civil War. He was famous for having led the raid which captured Huntsville, Alabama, in April of 1862. As director of the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, Ormsby Mitchell wrote: Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 1848; Popular Astronomy, 1860; and a book titled, The Astronomy of the Bible, in which he stated: <Let us turn to the language of the Bible; it furnishes the only vehicle to express the thoughts which overwhelm us, and we break out involuntarily in the language of God's...

Robert Charles Winthrop (May 12, 1809-November 16, 1894) was a U.S. Representative, author and orator. He served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1847-49. He was a descendant of Governor John Winthrop. On May 28, 1849, Robert Charles Winthrop spoke at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Bible Society in Boston, stating: <The voice of experience and the voice of our own reason speak but one language....Both united in teaching us, that men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand, when the rains fall, and the winds blow, and the floods...

Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809-April 19, 1882) was a British naturalist. He propounded the evolutionary theory of origins. In his work, Origin of Species, 1859, Charles Darwin wrote: <To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.> 1809CD001 <May we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of...

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, 1861-65, responsible for preserving the Union through the Civil War; supported the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery, ratified 1865; appointed Ulysses S. Grant as Commander in Chief of the Union forces, 1864; delivered the Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863; issued the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863; U.S. Senate candidate of the newly formed Republican Party, 1858, gaining national attention through his debates against pro-choice incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas; U.S. Representative, 1847-49, having defeated the Methodist Circuit rider, Peter Cartwright; member of the Illinois State Legislature, 1834-42; married Mary...

Edgar Allen Poe (January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849) was an American poet, literary critic and story writer. His best known works include: The Fall of the House of Usher, 1840; The Raven, 1845; and the short stories: The Cask of Amontillado; The Purloined Letter; The Masque of the Red Death; and The Pit and the Pendulum. In Tamerlane, 1827, Edgar Allen Poe wrote: <O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven.> 1809EP001 Edgar Allen Poe stated: <Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their...