3.  So, my fellow citizens, the reason I came away from
    Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there.  There
    are so many people in Washington who know things that are not
    so, and there are so few people who know anything about what
    the people of the United States are thinking about.  I have to
    come away and get reminded of the rest of the country.  I have
    to come away and talk to men who are up against the real
    thing and say to them, “I am with you if you are with me.” 
    And the only test of being with me is not to think about me
    personally at all, but merely to think of me as the
    expression for the time being of the power and dignity and
    hope of the United States.

    WOODROW WILSON:  Speech to the American Federation
    of Labor, 1917

4.  But if, Sir Henry, in gratitude for this beautiful tribute
    which I have just paid you, you should feel tempted to
    reciprocate by taking my horses from my carriage and dragging
    me in triumph through the streets, I beg that you will
    restrain yourself for two reasons.  The first reason is—­I
    have no horses; the second is—­I have no carriage.

    SIMEON FORD:  Me and Sir Henry (Irving), 1899

5.  Literature has its permanent marks.  It is a connected growth
    and its life history is unbroken.  Masterpieces have never
    been produced by men who have had no masters.  Reverence for
    good work is the foundation of literary character.  The
    refusal to praise bad work or to imitate it is an author’s
    professional chastity.

    Good work is the most honorable and lasting thing in the
    world.  Four elements enter into good work in literature:—­

    An original impulse—­not necessarily a new idea, but a new
    sense of the value of an idea.

    A first-hand study of the subject and material.

    A patient, joyful, unsparing labor for the perfection of
    form.

    A human aim—­to cheer, console, purify, or ennoble the life
    of the people.  Without this aim literature has never sent an
    arrow close to the mark.

It is only by good work that men of letters can justify their right to a place in the world.  The father of Thomas Carlyle was a stone-mason, whose walls stood true and needed no rebuilding.  Carlyle’s prayer was:  “Let me write my books as he built his houses.”

    HENRY VAN DYKE:  Books, Literature and the People,
    1900

6.  All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical
    to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical
    politicians who have no place among us—­a sort of people who
    think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and
    who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of