“The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken.”

A great empire and little minds go ill together.

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.

Never the grave gives back what it has won!

We go to the grave of a friend saying, “A man is dead,” but angels throng about him saying, “A man is born.”

All along this path I tread, my heart betrays my weary head, with nothing but my love to save, from the cradle to the grave.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one’s toes on the gravestones.

It is an in, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.