No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

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.

The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.