My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.

There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.

While prudence will endeavor to avoid this issue of war, bravery will prepare to meet it.

It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.