The charities of life are scattered everywhere, enameling the vales of human beings as the flowers paint the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of refinement, but a natural instinct.

The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

The public is wiser than the wisest critic.

Beauty is but the sensible image of the infinite. Like truth and justice, it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law, it is a companion of the soul.

If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.

By common consent, gray hairs are a crown of glory: the only object of respect that can never excite envy.