A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.

Human passions unbridled by morality and religion...would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.

No truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well being of communities.

[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.

Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.

Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence

If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle