Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found... all is confusion beyond it.

Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.