True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.