To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.

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

They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.

Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.

Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.