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The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.
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“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.”

Thomas Paine

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Source
Common Sense
Date
1776
Meaning

Meaning of “The sun never shined on a cause of…”

The line emphasizes the scale and future consequences of the political choice Paine believed his contemporaries faced.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Common Sense (1776), “Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs.” The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated 1776 Wikisource transcription; Paine enlarges the stakes from a city or province to a continent and to posterity.

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Ideas connected with this quotation

CommunityCourage Quotes About Acting Despite FearFreedomHope Quotes About Possibility in Uncertain TimesPositive Quotes About a Constructive OutlookPurpose Quotes About Direction, Duty & Meaningful WorkShort
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hope for the patience to win my freedom.
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“hope for the patience to win my freedom.”

Rabindranath Tagore · Fruit-Gathering · 1916
Meaning & context

Freedom is paired with patient hope rather than anxious rescue, suggesting that endurance and inner steadiness are part of the desired liberation.

Source details

Fruit-Gathering, poem LXXIX; Project Gutenberg #6522. This excerpt completes a prayer against anxious craving to be saved and retains that spiritual context.

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You can make a little Eden of the sphere you occupy.
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“You can make a little Eden of the sphere you occupy.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox · Poems of Power · 1903
Meaning & context

The line narrows improvement to the area a person can actually influence, suggesting that better conduct and kinder action can make a local environment more humane.

Source details

Poems of Power, “Wishing,” published 1903; Project Gutenberg #6667. The surrounding stanzas urge personal action when wishing for a better, wiser or happier world.

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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · 1776
Meaning & context

Political change is framed as a rare opportunity to build institutions deliberately rather than merely inherit arrangements from the past.

Source details

Common Sense (1776), Appendix, validated Wikisource scan leaf 48 / printed page 40. Paine argues that independence creates an opportunity to form a new constitution and writes that Americans have it in their power to begin the world over again.

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From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.
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“From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

Frederick Douglass · Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845
Meaning & context

Understanding why enslavers feared literacy revealed education as a route toward agency, turning reading into a concrete part of Douglass’s pursuit of freedom.

Source details

Narrative, Chapter VI; Douglass recalls hearing Hugh Auld argue that literacy would make him unfit for slavery.

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The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
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“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · 1776
Meaning & context

Paine enlarges a local political conflict into a broader argument about principles that affect people beyond one country or generation.

Source details

Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine frames the American dispute as involving principles of natural rights and human concern beyond one locality.

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