American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
Category Archive: 1800
Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.
I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.
As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.