Boston Quotes

“There can be no doubt that so far as the upbuilding of a strong and efficient State was concerned, this policy was entirely successful. To justify it on abstract grounds is impossible, and even its political necessity was, to say the least, doubtful. Whether rightly or wrongly, however, this system of harsh repression was the one adopted; and it is to be feared that its authors were little concerned with the need of justification.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“In the case of Roger Williams it is not easy to show that the government of Massachusetts did not have a perfectly good case against him on purely secular grounds.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“On the west of the Neck were long reaches of flats and marshes covered by the tides at high water, and known to the inhabitants of Boston for more than two hundred years as the Back Bay.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“With Winthrop came seven or eight hundred, increased very shortly to a thousand, by some additional vessels; and this was soon after followed by a second thousand. No such attempt at settlement had been seen before on the American continent. It was not the longing for adventure, but the transfer of a people, a government, and a Church; and this it is which separates it from all other colonizing undertakings in America at their inception, and which made the Massachusetts settlement from the beginning such a moving force in American history.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“Headed by Roger Conant, a man still clear to us as possessed of leadership and force, these four went southward and westward from Cape Ann and settled at a place called Naumkeag, to be better known in future as Salem.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“William Blackstone had laid out a farm and orchard, and built him a house on the western slope of one of the hills, whence he could see the sun set across the windings of the river Charles, and over the wide brown marshes through which it made its way.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“On Noddle's Island, now East Boston, was established Samuel Maverick, a young gentleman of property and education, who had there laid out a farm, built him a house and fort, where four guns were mounted, and which served as a refuge and defence for all the planters of the neighbourhood.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“The little plantations at Weymouth, Hull, and Mount Wollaston, although within the limits of Boston Bay, nevertheless do not concern us here so much as the solitary men who had made homes for themselves upon the land now actually part of the modern city. On an island in the harbour was settled David Thomson, "Gent.," an attorney for Gorges, with his family. Thomson died in 1628, leaving to his family his island and to the island his name, which it has borne ever since.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“He had however one great advantage over both his Pilgrim and Puritan enemies, for he wrote a narrative of his adventures in a reckless and amusing fashion of which they were incapable, and thus has kept the laugh forever on his side.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“With some education, and not a little literary ability, he was as clever and worthless a scamp as can well be imagined, and when he took possession of Mount Wollaston, which he named Merry Mount, — or Mare Mount, — he proceeded to enjoy himself freely after his own fashion.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“Two of these little settlements were made in 1625, on the shores of the bay at the head of which the future town was to stand. One was at Hull, where some men exiled from Plymouth and a few stragglers of uncertain origin gathered together. The other was formed by a trading-party under the lead of one Captain Wollaston, who settled within the limits of the present town of Quincy on a low hill near the shore, which still bears the name of the leader. Wollaston himself soon became dissatisfied and departed for Virginia, where he disposed of his indented servants and sent back for more, the trade in human beings having proved profitable.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston