It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.

But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house.

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.

Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.