In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence.
The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded. Their indiscriminate violence prostrates for the time all public authority, and its consequences are sometimes extensive and terrible.
A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite.
Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.
A people contending for life and liberty are seldom disposed to look with a favorable eye upon either men or measures whose passions, interests or consequences will clash with those inestimable objects.
Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.
No distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder.
Merit rarely goes unrewarded.
I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this; because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults, or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.
Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal.
Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.
From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!
The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions.
I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned.
The most certain way to make a man your enemy is to tell him you esteem him such.
Facts may speak for themselves.
To speak evil of any one, unless there is unequivocal proofs of their deserving it, is an injury for which there is no adequate reparation.
Nothing is too extravagant to expect from men who conceive they are ungratefully and unjustly dealt by.
Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.
An ambassador has no need of spies; his character is always sacred.