We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.

No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.

Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.

Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.