I look upon the pleasure which we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life. . . It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of Nature, and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation.
The happiest end of life is this: when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work.
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.
For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.
Virtue is uniform, conformable to reason, and of unvarying consistency; nothing can be added to it that can make it more than virtue; nothing can be taken from it, and the name of virtue be left.