Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.

Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.

Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

I have sworn upon the altar of god.

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.