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.

Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

I cannot conceive a rank more honorable, than that which flows from the uncorrupted choice of a brave and free people, the purest source and original fountain of all power.

Like a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have to labor with the current of opinion, when COMPELLED perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy pointed out, as plain as any problem in Euclid, in the first instance.

Be not glad at the misfortune of another, though he may be your enemy.

There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.

My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfil our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: Being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so.