Ministers and merchants love nobody.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.

I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.

I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Still less, let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.