Five things are requisite to a good officer — ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.

Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better.

Charity is ... a universal remedy against discord, and an holy cement for mankind.

Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other.

Disappointments that aren't a result of our own foolishness are a testing of our faith or a correction from heaven, and it is our own fault if these disappointments don't work for our own good.

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.

Always remember to bound thy thoughts to the present occasion.