With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.

A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]

The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude [is] due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next.

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government of discretion.

I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.

I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.