“We should amuse our evening hours of life in cultivating the tender plants, and bringing them to perfection, before they are transplanted to a happier clime.”
Source: The Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts : with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“We must take care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture.”
Source: Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence
“An ambassador has no need of spies; his character is always sacred.”
Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts
“All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external happiness of elevated office.”
Source: The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States
“Precedents are dangerous things; let the rein of government then be braced and held with a steady hand.”
Source: The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States
“The pure and benign light of revelation has had a meliorating influence on mankind.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral and Religious
“The friendship I have conceived will not be impaired by absence; but it may be no unpleasing circumstance to brighten the chain by a renewal of the covenant.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral and Religious
“Influence is not government.”
Source: The Writings of George Washington: pt.III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789. 1835
“It is among the evils, and perhaps not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. When this happens they are roused to action. Hence it is that those kinds of government are so slow.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious
“It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.”
Source: The Quotable George Washington: The Wisdom of an American Patriot