A wise and frugal Government which shall restrain men from injuring one another which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it but is always breaking away from the present moment and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.

A quest for knowledge is not a war with faith spirituality is not usually an infelicitous amalgam of superstition and philistinism and moral relativism taken outside midfield leads inexorably both to heresy and to secular wickedness which are often identical.

Anger elicits anger fear elicits fear no matter how well meaning we may be.

A book is sent out into the world and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible Homer Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.