That government that governs least governs best.

The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.

You have not been mistaken in supposing my views and feeling to be in favor of the abolition of war. Of my dispos[i]tion to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself, the world has had proofs, and more, perhaps, than it has approved. I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the dispos[i]tion to war; but of its abolition I despair.

To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.