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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature, Chapter 5: the New England period — Preliminary (search)
e had upon the orator's audiences; but the need remains for some other explanation of the interest in his printed speeches which continues fifty years after his death. It is not altogether easy at first to discover the secret of their literary power. Many of his phrases became famous; but it is astonishing to find upon examination how large a proportion of them are statements of simple truth, such as one would think hardly needed to be made. Here are a few of those which are recorded in Bartlett's Dictionary of Quotations: Mind is the great lever of all things; Knowledge is the great sun in the firmament; Thank God I also am an American; Independence now and Independence forever; Justice is the great interest of man on earth; and so on. These are universal truths, but unfortunately they are a little too obviously true when we come to take them by themselves; they are too much what any of us might say. We do not really go on a great occasion to hear things said just as we might have