I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.

This oration will be read five hundred years hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, and indeed at the end of every year, forever and ever.

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.

The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion.

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

Your Letters concerning Miss N. have given me as much Concern as they ought-not knowing the Character nor what to advise, but feeling all a Fathers Tenderness, longing to be at home that I might enquire and consider and take the Care I ought.

During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.