Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.
It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.