A man's diary is a record in youth of his sentiments, in middle age of his actions, in old age of his reflections.

I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music.

No book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible.

I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring ... a conspiracy of the few against the equal rights of the many ...Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.