A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. - Edmund Burke

All general privations are great, because they are all terrible; vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence.

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.