Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.