I am then to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics, & to sink into the bosom of my family, my farm & my books. I have my house to build, my feilds to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who labor for mine.
I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.
my books, my family, my friends, & my farm, furnish more than enough to occupy me the remainder of my life, & of that tranquil occupation most analogous to my physical & moral constitution.
When I retired from this place and the office of Secretary of state, it was in the firmest contemplation of never more returning here. There had indeed been suggestions in the public papers that I was looking towards a succession to the President’s chair. But feeling a consciousness of their...
all these concerns I am now leaving to be settled by my friend mr Madison. within a few days I retire to my family, my books, & farms & having gained the harbor myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm, with anxiety indeed, but not with envy. never did prisoner,...
I avail myself of this occasion of returning sincere thanks for the kind dispositions towards myself expressed in your letter, and for the sentiments, which it conveys, of approbation of my conduct in the administration of the public affairs. if that conduct has met the general approbation of my...
the total change of occupation from the house & writing table to constant emploiment in the garden & farm has added wonderfully to my happiness. it is seldom & with great reluctance I ever take up a pen. I read some, but not much.
I am become sensible of a great advantage your profession has over most others, that, to the close of your life, you can be always doing good to mankind: whereas a retired politician is like a broken down courser, unfit for the turf, and good for little else. I am endeavoring to recover the...
I find I am losing sight of the progress of the world of letters. here we talk but of rains & droughts, of blights & frosts, of our ploughs & cattle; & if the topic changes to politics I meddle little with them. in truth I never had a cordial relish for them, & abhor the...
my object too at present is peace and tranquility, neither doing nor saying any thing to be quoted, or to make me the subject of newspaper disquisitions.
my present course of life admits less reading than I wish. from breakfast, or noon at latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farms or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, & affairs: and the few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by...
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 have withdrawn myself from all political intermedlings, to indulge the evening of my life with what have been the passions of every portion of it, books, science, my farms, my family and friends. to these every hour of the day is now devoted.
nothing is more incumbent on the
old than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no
longer
earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.
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...