I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.

If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?

The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure.