He [Washington] has often declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and the more pointedly.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.

It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known.

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living": that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.

Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God.