I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.
False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
The less virtue, the more wealth there is; the less wealth, the more virtue.
To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
The political spirit tends to make men stand aloof from each other.
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.
The severe morals of the early Romans produced a race of men who were neither superstitiously devout nor philosophically skeptical.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever laws permit.
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Laws that have not their basis in nature are useless.
In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.