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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 14 Mar. 1818 [Quote]

A great obstacle to good education is the in ordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. when this poison infects the mind, it destroys it’s tone, and revolts it against wholsome reading. reason and fact, plain and unadorned,...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 14 Mar. 1818 [Quote]

female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 17 May 1818 [Quote]

my repugnance to the writing table becomes daily & hourly more deadly & insurmountable. in place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. and I indulge it: because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path thro’ the dreary wilderness of time...

Extract from Francis W. Gilmer to Dabney Carr, 12 Oct. 1818 [Quote]

what would you say to edifying the world by a chaste, elegant, and philosophical life of Citn Thomas your Uncle? He is in my judgement the best subject for biography after Gen: Washington which our country has afforded. This is a question worthy of consideration. It would be a great thing for a...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 12 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

but I see nothing in this renewal of the game of ‘Robin’s alive’ but a general demoralization of the nation, a filching from industry it’s honest earnings, wherewith to build up palaces, and raise gambling stock for swindlers and shavers, who are to close too their career of piracies by...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 12 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie’s, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. I feel a much greater interest in knowing what passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing therefore but of the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joel Yancey, 17 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

the mortality among our negroes is still more serious as involving moral as well as interested considerations. I have had n they are well fed, and well clothed, & I have had no reason to believe that any overseer, since Griffin’s time, has over worked them. accordingly the deaths among the...

Extract from William C. Rives to John H. Cocke, 20 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

I am very happy in being able, at last, to congratulate you on the success of the Bill for the establishment of an University at the Central college. It was carried, on yesterday, by in the House of Delegates by the overwhelming & unexpected majority of 141 to 28 ... Among the many sources of...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Vine Utley, 21 Mar. 1819 [Quote]

I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour’s previous reading of something moral whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. but whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print.

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Vine Utley, 21 Mar. 1819 [Quote]

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...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 13 Apr. 1819 [Quote]

the nation, and especially the wealthier portion of it which is in possession of our legislature the function of legislation, is unfortunately in willing bondage to the snares & seductions of this the painted harlot of banking bubbles and there can be no remedy but by setting their minds to...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas B. Parker, 15 May 1819 [Quote]

were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. my fundamental. principle would be ... that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not...