Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.

[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.

You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. And you can write ten times better than I can.

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.