We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

Earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers, diligently to attend divine services.

My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual.

It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.

A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

Those who don’t read the newspapers are better off than those who do insofar as those who know nothing are better off than those whose heads are filled with half-truths and lies.