Our ancestors ... possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them.

1.Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 2.Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3.Never spend your money before you have it. 4.Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. 5.Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. 6.We never repent of having eaten too little. 7.Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8.How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. 9.Take things always by their smooth handle. 10.When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.

The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be.

We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.

The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.

Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.