Status Updates From Our Country's Founders a Bo...

"In your mode of living, be not ambitious of adopting every extravagant fashion. Many fashions are not only inconvenient and expensive, but inconsistent with good taste...true taste demands great simplicity of dress. A well made person is one of the most beautiful of all God's works, and a simple neat dress, displays this person to the best advantage."

-Noah Webster, from "Advice to the Young," 1834

“Murmur not at the ways of Providence.”

“Be equally attentive to every relation into which all-wise Providence may lead you...”

“...can never be so void of humanity and the essential duties of religion as to turn a deaf ear to the numberless cries of the poor and needy and refuse for their assistance a little of that superfluity which a bountiful providence has so liberally bestowed on them.”

“Since then, our present state, how prosperous so ever, hath no stability, but what depends on the good providence of God, how careful should we be not to harden our hearts against the diseases of our Fellow Creatures, lest He who owns and governs all, should punish our inhumanity deprives us of a stewardship in which we have so unworthily behaved, laugh at our calamity and mock when our fear cometh.”

“Franklin notes that it is by exercising the virtue of charity that most of all recommends us to the Deity and believed that if we take care of the neediest among us, God will take care of us.”

“Tho earthly comforts are taken away I will bit repine, He who gave them has surely a right to limit their duration, and has continued them to me much longer than I deserved....Still I have many blessings left, many comforts to be thankful for and rejoice in. I am not left to mourn as one without hope.”

“...by a firm Belief that a Being of Infinite Wisdom and unbounded Goodness will carve out my portion in tender mercy towards me! Yea tho He slay me I will trust in Him said holy Job. What tho His corrective Hand hath been stretched against me; I will not murmur.

“Remember that national crimes require national punishments and without declaring what punishment awaits this evil, you may venture to assure them that it cannot pass with impunity unless God shall cease to be just or merciful.”

“If in the Old Testament God swears by His holiness, and by the excellency of Jacob that the earth shall tremble and every one mourn that dwells therein for the iniquity of those who oppress the poor and crush the needy.”

“Dependence upon Him, habits of reverence and gratitude, to God and habits of love and compassion to our fellow men and habits of temperance, recollection, and self-government will afford us a real and substantial pleasure. We may then exult in a consciousness of the favor of God and the prospect of everlasting felicity.”

“Abraham Lincoln in 1863 made it an annual National holiday to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November.

“It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from an outstretched arm of tyranny which may appear under any mode or form of government.”

“From the sobriety of their manners, their simple habits, their attention to the education and moral conduct of their children, they had the highest reason to hope that it might have been very long before the faith if their religion was shaken...”

“...so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.”

“...there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity...can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right..”

“...that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality...”

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand, which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

“...my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States...0