I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?

I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.

No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.

Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.