When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society and cast off all regard to religion their case is much to be pitied.
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.
When bad men combine the good must associate else they will fall one by one an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Who is more to be pitied a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
That is who Barack Obama is - a person of admirable character - and that is who he has remained for me over these last four years. I have not agreed with his every decision but never once have I seen him break his cool lose his composure or abandon his insightful perspective - even during the most serious and/or absurd national disasters.