The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.

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.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

War never leaves where it found a nation.