Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.

Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.

No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one.