His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble.

To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country... and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

His was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quite and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.

I served with General Washington in the Legislature of Virginia... and... with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

[First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801]