People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.

Every human benefit, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact; and great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.