knowlege indeed is a desireable, a lovely possession, but I do not scruple to say that health is more so. it is of little consequence to store the mind with science if the body be permitted to become debilitated. if the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. the sovereign invigorator of the...

I love to see honest men & honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, & then profit by their measures.

I sincerely wish with you we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. bad men will sometimes get in, & with such an immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public mind & principles. this is a...

3. Moral philosophy. ... man was destined for society. his morality therefore was to be formed to this object. he was endowed with a sense of right & wrong merely relative to this. this sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling ... the moral sense, or...

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens & not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, & that Missionaries of that description from hence would avail...

I am happy to hear of his good health. I think he will outlive us all, I mean the Declaration-men, altho’ our senior since the death of Colo Floyd. it is a race in which I have no ambition to win. man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. like that too, if he continues longer...

be good my dear, as I have always found you never be angry with any body, nor speak harm of them, try to let every body’s faults be forgotten, as you would wish yours to be, take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in having it yourself, & then all the world will love you ...

I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. on the contrary, while in public service especially, I have thought the public entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed.

I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. my hopes indeed sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.

I cannot act as if all men were unfaithful because some are so; nor believe that all will betray me, because some do. I had rather be the victim of occasional infidelities, than relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of man.