The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

When a man becomes a conformist, he is sacrificing the richness of independent thinking.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.