Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil; while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.