Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education . . . . To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.

Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences.

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure.

I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, ... of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too.