When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.

The balance of power is the scale of peace.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.

Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this.... Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm.... The remembrance then of what is past, if it operates rightly must inspire her with the most laudable of an ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great adversity.... Let then, the world see that she can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war.