Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them

...It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is in all this design, cause, and effect up to an Ultimate Cause-a Fabricator of all things, from matter and motion-their Preserver and Regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms-and their Regenerator into new and other forms.

May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.

We owe gratitude to France, justice to England, good will to all, and subservience to none ... it was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.