All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered.

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

Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.

It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.