William M. Evarts Quotes

United States, Lawyer
February 6, 1818 – February, 28, 1901.

William Maxwell Evarts was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He was renowned for his skills as a litigator and was involved in three of the most important causes of American political jurisprudence in his day: the impeachment of a president, the Geneva arbitration and the contests before the electoral commission to settle the presidential election of 1876.

Also known as Statesman

The pious ones of Plymouth who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their own knees and then upon the aborigines.

William M. Evarts
- Firsts
- Reaching
- Pious
The dignity of the act is the deliberate, circumspect, open, and serene performance by these men in the clear light of day, and by a concurrent purpose, of a civic duty, which embraced the greatest hazards to themselves and to all the people from whom they held this deputed discretion, but which, to their sober judgments, promised benefits to that people and their posterity, from generation to generation, exceeding these hazards and commensurate with its own fitness.

William M. Evarts
- People
- Purpose
- Judgment

The world can absorb only doses of truth... too much would kill it.

William M. Evarts
- World
- Much
- Dose
It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne.

William M. Evarts
- World
- Together
- Elements
Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of the ascent, was adjustable on principles of common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality.

William M. Evarts
- People
- Reason
- Progress
Truth is to the moral world what gravitation is to the material.

William M. Evarts