Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also.

In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.