There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.

Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.