Those who attempt to level never equalize

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

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.

When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.

The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.