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

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.

There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.

He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.