The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.

A native of America who cannot read or write is . . . as rare as a comet or an earthquake.

All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

By the former of these (canon law), the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order.

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.... The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.