“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.”

“You can never plan the future by the past.”

“Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.”

“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”

“Laws, like houses, lean on one another.”

“Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.”

“A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”

“Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.”

“Education is the cheap defense of nations.”