determine never to be idle. no person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. it is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. and that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately.
Perhaps you think you have nothing to say to me ... there is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me ... Write then my dear daughter punctually on your day
I hope you are getting well, towards which great care of yourself is necessary: for however adviseable it is for those in health to expose themselves freely, it is not so for the sick. you will be out in time to begin your garden, & that will tempt you to be out a great deal, than which...
Your two last letters are those which have given me the greatest pleasure of any I ever recieved from you. The one announced that you were become a notable housewife, the other a mother. this last is undoubtedly the key-stone of the arch of matrimonial happiness, as the first is it’s daily aliment.
on the whole I find nothing any where else in point of climate which Virginia need envy to any part of the world. here they are locked up in ice and snow for six months. Spring and autumn, which make a paradise of our country, are rigorous winter with them, and a Tropical summer breaks on them...
Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had projected ... we were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Thuya, silver fir, White pine, Pitch pine,...
these reveries ... leave me always impressed with the desire of being at home once more, and of exchanging labour, envy, and malice, for ease, domestic occupation, & domestic love & society, where I may once more be happy with you, with mr. Randolph, & dear little Anne, with whom even...
I never before knew the full value of trees. my house is entirely embosomed in high plane trees, with good grass below, & under them I breakfast, dine, write, read & receive my company. what would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
when I look to the ineffable pleasures of my family society, I become more & more disgusted with the jealousies, the hatred, & the rancorous & malignant passions of this scene, & lament my having ever again been drawn into public view.
I envy those who stay at home, enjoying the society of their friendly neighbors, blessed with their firesides, and employed in doing something every day which looks usefully to futurity.
yours of the 12th inst ... by kindling up all my recollections increases my impatience to leave this place & every thing which can be disgusting, for Monticello and my dear family, comprising every thing which is pleasurable to me in this world.
we have taken their Upper Canada, and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to remove them fully and finally from our continent. and what they will feel more, for they value their colonies only for...
the boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards us: but we shall ride over it as we have over all others. it is not a moral question, but one merely of power. it’s object is to raise a geographical principle for the choice of a...
the disease of liberty is catching: those armies will take it in the South, carry it thence to their own country spread there the infection of revolution & representative government, and raise it’s people from the prone condition of brutes to the erect attitude of man.
I rejoice also in your advocation of the Indian rights. & concur in all your sentiments in their favor ... I wish that was the only blot in our moral history, and that no other race had higher charges to bring against us. I am not apt to despair; yet I see not how we are to disengage...