On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody, except merely its external facts... all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress [behind] closed doors - and no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown.

Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.

The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.