Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.

Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.