All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a man: because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

And he that is taught to live upon little, owes more to his father's wisdom, than he that has a great deal left him, does to his father's care.

My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.

Peace can only be secured by justice; never by force of arms.

God sends us the poor to try us.... And he that refuses them a little out of the great deal that God has given lays up poverty in store for his own posterity.

If thy debtor be honest and capable, thou hast thy money again, if not with increase, with praise; if he prove insolvent, don't ruin him to get that which it will not ruin thee to lose, for thou art but a steward.

Above all things endeavor to breed them up the love of virtue, and that holy plain way of it which we have lived in, that the world in no part of it get into my family. I had rather they we're homely than finely bred as to outward behavior; yet I love sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness tempered with sobriety.