The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

we defer therefore till this time twelve month to avail ourselves of the instruction of that place, and particularly of your kindness in the two branches of Botany and Natural history to which we wish him particularly to apply.

Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read.

Every constitution..., and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is anact of force, and not of right.

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me:... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual.