Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.