"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom."

"The strength of a nation dependeth not on the number of its inhabitants but on the spirit that animates them."

"It [hereditary succession] appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. …"

"The independence of America, considered merely as a commercial object, is an object of no inconsiderable magnitude."