It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

Public calamity is a mighty leveler

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting