In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

The States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of rights, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation.

I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.