Laws ... proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge be a mere machine.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.

music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.

Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.

In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.