I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I coud wish to obliterate, till I am bid to revive them. - but experience alas! sadly reminds me how Impossible this is. - and evinces an Opinion which I have long entertaind, that there is a Destiny, which has the Sovereign controul of our Actions - not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.

Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable. When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me.

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.

Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.

One must never ask of fortune more than she can grant.

Men's minds are as variant as their faces, and, where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable.