Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

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.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.