“How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal!”

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

It is to me a most affecting thing to hear myself prayed for, in particular as I do every day in the week, and disposes me to bear with more composure

Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?

Great necessities call out great virtues.

The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex, was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other.

The heart is long, very long in receiving the convictions that is forced upon it by reason… affection still lingers in the Bosom, even after esteem has taken its flight.

Wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

No one is without their difficulties, whether in High, or low Life, & every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.

Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.

I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

I acknowledge myself a unitarian

If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.