Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth, and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation.

True friendship is a plant of slow growth.

To err is nature, to rectify error is glory.

War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

[The adoption of the Constitution] will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.

I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in His holy protection; that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.