He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

There are two ways to increase your wealth. Increase your means or decrease your wants. The best is to do both at the same time.

I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.

If any form of government is capable of making a nation happy, ours I think bids fair now for producing that effect. But after all much depends upon the people who are governed.

Hope and faith may be more firmly built upon charity, than charity upon faith and hope.

Grievances cannot be redressed until they are known; and they cannot be known but through complaints and petitions. If these are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? And who will deliver them? Wise governments encouraged the airing of grievances, even those that were lightly founded Foolish governments did the opposite - to their peril. Where complaining is a crime, hope becomes despair.

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.