Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.
Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand.
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
The flesh is sweeter, where the creature has some chance for its life; for that reason, I always use a single ball, even if it be at a bird or a squirrel; besides, it saves lead, for, when a body knows how to shoot, one piece of lead is enough for all, except hard-lived animals.
Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannogt congeal in winter.
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
When men struggle for the single life God has given them. . . even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood.
If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.
Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys.
It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names.
The Americans. . . are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.
The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.
The press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.
God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst.
Christ , in the parable of the vine dressers, has taught us a sublime lesson of justice, by showing that to the things which are not our own, we can have no just claim.
America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.