The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

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.

All authority belongs to the people.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

I have lived temperately....I double the doctor's recommendation of a glass and a half wine each day and even treble it with a friend.

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries of comforts of life.

A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]