It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.

I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.

No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.