Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.

But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

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

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.