Life is to be entered upon with courage.

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.

The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.

To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.

I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.