I hope I shall see you in Georgetown, and certainly shall if the movements of the stage will permit it: for I prefer that conveyance to travelling with my own horses, because it gives me, what I have long been without, an opportunity of plunging into the mixed characters of my country, the most...
I have had a long attack of rheumatism, without fever, & without pain while I kept myself still. a total prostration of the muscles of the back, hips, & thighs deprived me of the power of walking, and leaves it still in a very impaired state. a pain, when I walk, seems to have fixed...
I left all well at Monticello, except Benjamin whose health is very precarious. Lewis is become the favorite of all. his vivacity, his intelligence, & his beauty (for the mark in his forehead is disappearing) make him a perfect pet. you will perceive from these senile...
Another of our friends of 76. is gone, my dear Sir, another of the Co-signers of the independance of our country. and a better man, than Rush, could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. we too must go; and that ere long.
one of the misfortunes of living too long is the loss of all one’s early friends and affections. when I review the ground over which I have passed since my youth, I see it strewed like a field of battle with the bodies of deceased friends. I stand like a solitary tree in a field, it’s trunk...
but our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a
pinion, next a spring, will be giving way: and however we may tinker them up for awhile, all will at length surcease motion.
tranquility is the softest pillow for the head of old age; and the good will of those around us the sweetest soother of our repose. in this state of being, seasoned by occasional communications with my friends, I shall pass willingly to that eternal sleep which, whether with, or without, dreams,...
You express a wish and a hope that I may have been writing memoirs of myself. while in public life, my whole time has been absorbed by the duties that laid me under; and now, when the world imagines I have nothing to do, I am in a state of as heavy drudgery as any office of my life ever subjected...
you propose a more Quixotic task in the reformation of what may be deemed defective in our constitution. no, my dear friend; nothing could allure me again into the furnace of politics. while engaged in the various functions of the government, duty required me to go straight forward, regardless of...
there is a ripeness of time for death, regarding others as well as ourselves, when it is reasonable we should drop off, and make room for another growth. when we have lived our generation out, we should not wish to encroach on another. I enjoy good health; I am happy in what is around me. yet I...
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. so good night! I will dream on, always fancying that mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.
You say I must go to writing history. while in public life, I had not time: and now that I am retired, I am past the time. to write history requires a whole life of observation, of enquiry, of labor and correction. it’s materials are not to be found among the ruins of a decayed memory. at this...
I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my own. like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, & that, not as an aliment so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double...
while too weak to set up the whole day, and afraid to increase the weakness by lying down, I longed for a Siesta chair which would have admitted the medium position.
each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is it’s duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. no, dear Sir....
mine is the next turn, and I shall meet it with good will. for after one’s friends are all gone before them, and our faculties leaving us too, one by one, why wish to linger in mere vegetation? as a solitary trunk in a desolate field, from which all it’s former companions have disappeared?
I am happy to hear of his good health. I think he will outlive us all, I mean the Declaration-men, altho’ our senior since the death of Colo Floyd. it is a race in which I have no ambition to win. man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. like that too, if he continues longer...
Your age of 84. and mine of 81. years ensure us a speedy meeting. we may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil which, in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed
He enjoys his dinner well, taking with meat a large proportion of vegetables. He has a strong preference for the wines of the Continent, of which he has many sorts of excellent quality, having been more than commonly succesful in his mode of importing, & preserving them ... Dinner is served...
but the general fact is I have observed, that at whatever age, or in whatever form, we have known a person of old so we believe them him to continue for ever after indefinitely, unchanged by time or waste decay.
could the dead feel any interest in Monuments or other remembrances of them ... The following would be to my Manes the most gratifying. On the grave a plain die or cube of 3.f without any mouldings, surmounted by an Obelisk of 6.f. height, each of a single stone: on the faces of the Obelisk the...