Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.

The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.