But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.

Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.

We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.

No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.