Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

One man with courage is a majority.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Freedom is a man's natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

More law, less justice.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.