Motives by excess reverse their very nature and instead of exciting, stun and stupefy the mind.

As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.

It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.

The love of indolence is universal, or next to it.

The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.