American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.