True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world.
Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom another.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Falsehood is a perennial spring.
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity -- the law of nature and of nations.
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
You can never plan the future by the past.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Education is the cheap defense of nations.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations -- wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The march of the human mind is slow.
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
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