Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.

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

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

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

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.

Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.

Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.