There are other places at which ... the laws have said there shall be towns; but Nature has said there shall not, and they remain unworthy of enumeration.

If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.

[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.

But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?