It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

You can never plan the future by the past.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

The wisdom of our ancestors.

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

邪恶夺取胜利的唯一必要条件，就是善良的人们无所作为。

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

William Pitt the Younger: Never fear, Mr. Burke: depend on it we shall go on as we are, until the day of judgment. Edmund Burke: Very likely, Sir. It is the day of no judgment that I am afraid of.

When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.