In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

The States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of rights, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation.