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

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.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

You never can tell whether bad luck may not, after all, turn out to be good luck.

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.