Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.

As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel; as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms.

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.

The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance.

Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws.

Worry is the only insupportable misfortune of life.

Our liberty cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices.