Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.

Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty.

I would recommend a free commerce both of matter and mind. I would let men enter their own churches with the same freedom as their own houses; and I would do it without a homily or graciousness or favor, for tyranny itself is to me a word less odious than toleration.

We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone.

A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

Contentment is better than divinations or visions.

It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.