Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter.

A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others and may make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, then ruined by too confident security.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.