Nothing is so swift as calumny, nothing is more easily propagated, nothing more readily credited, nothing more widely circulated.

The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.

Virtue is uniform, conformable to reason, and of unvarying consistency; nothing can be added to it that can make it more than virtue; nothing can be taken from it, and the name of virtue be left.

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.

There is a certain virtue in every good man, which night and day stirs up the mind with the stimulus of glory, and reminds it that all mention of our name will not cease at the same time with our lives, but that our fame will endure to all posterity.

The devil finds work for idle hands to do. Better to reign in the hell than serve in heaven. We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.

This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition.