No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one.

It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these great reformations i.e., emancipation of slaves and settlement of the Virginia constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis.

Force cannot give right.

Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.

Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.

The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.