France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties.
The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.
Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.
Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.
The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
The uniform tenor of a man’s life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.
No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.
No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.
There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.
With all the imperfections of our present government, it is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.
A man’s moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.
It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.
Those who have once got an ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.
When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good.
Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.
Opinion, and the just maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in my view.
When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise.