Quote collection
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"The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives."
"All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
"The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries."
"France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties."
"The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it. We are always told that things are going on well; Why change them? 'Chi sta bene, no si mueve,' said the Italian, 'let him who stands well, stand still.' This is true; and I verily believe they would go on well with us under an absolute monarch, while our present character remains, of order, industry and love of peace, and restrained as he would be, by the proper spirit of the people."
"[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head."
"An injured friend is the bitterest of foes."
"The most successful war seldom pays for its losses."
"Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival."
"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations."
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
"I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other."
"The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters"
"An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry."
"The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world."
"No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place."
"It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth."
"The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us."
"The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity."