Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

I think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals.

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

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

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

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.