Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.

When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it. You may repent not having seen it, but you can never repent having seen it.

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.

In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.

Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.

It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.

No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.