Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.

Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.

Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment & enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that in France the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood.

When sins are dear to us we are too prone to slide into them again. The act of repentance itself is often sweetened with the thought that it clears our account for a repetition of the same sin.