Father I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet.

99% percent of failures are the ones who make excuses.

Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

History and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.

I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.