“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

Virtue is not always amiable.

No man is entirely free from weakness and imperfection in this life.

We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.

If the fundamental principles in the Declaration of Independence, as self-evident truths, are real truths, the existence of slavery, in any form, is a wrong.

A politician in this country must be the man of a party. I would fain be the man of my whole country.

Go on and improve in everything worthy.

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.

If conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.

Posterity – you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong.

It is my wish to fill every moment of my time with some action of the mind which may contribute to the pleasure or the improvement of my fellow creatures.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence.

Open your life wide, and take me in forever. I will never be tired-I will never be noisy when you want to be still…nobody else will see me, but you-but that is enough-I shall not want any more.

Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.

Forever – is composed of Nows – ‘Tis not a different time. Let Months dissolve in further Months – And Years – exhale in Years.

It was the meanest moment of eternity.

While you have a thing it can be taken from you, but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then forever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give.

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke.

I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.