Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.

It is in the relaxation of security; it is in the expansion of prosperity; it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned.

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

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.

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.