The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.

Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.

The difficulty is no longer to find candidates for the offices, but offices for the candidates.

He, who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.