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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 19 Aug. 1785 [Quote]

it is of great importance to set a resolution, never not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. there is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible & he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second & third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 20 Sept. 1785 [Quote]

I received this summer a letter from Messrs Buchanan & Hay as directors of the public buildings desiring I would have drawn for them plans of sundry buildings, & in the first place of a Capitol ... we took for our model what is called the Maison-quarrèe of Nismes, one of the most...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 25 Sept. 1785 [Quote]

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens & not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, & that Missionaries of that description from hence would avail...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Charles Bellini, 30 Sep. 1785 [Quote]

you are perhaps curious to know how this new scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not advantageously I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 7 Nov. 1785 [Quote]

Chocolate. this article when ready made, and also the Cacao becomes so easily soon rancid, and the difficulties of getting it fresh have been so great in America that it’s use has spread but little. the way to increase it’s consumption would be to permit it to be brought to us immediately from...

Extract from John Adams to Henry Knox, 15 Dec. 1785 [Quote]

You can Scarcely have heard a Character too high of my Friend and Colleague Mr. Jefferson, either in point of Power or Virtues. My Fellow Labourer in Congress, eight or nine years ago, upon many arduous Tryals, particularly in the draught of our Declaration of Independence and in the formation of...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 25 Jan. 1786 [Quote]

I fear from an expression in your letter that the people of Kentucké think of separating, not only from Virginia (in which they are right,) but also from the confederacy. I own I should think this a most calamitous event, and such an one as every good citizen on both sides should set himself...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 8 Feb. 1786 [Quote]

à propos of the Capitol. do my dear friend exert yourself to get the plan begun or set aside, & that adopted which was drawn here. it was taken from a model which has been the admiration of 16. centuries, which has been the object of as many pilgrimages as the tomb of Mahomet: which will give...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Page, 4 May 1786 [Quote]

the city of London, tho’ handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as Philadelphia. their architecture is in the most wretched stile I ever saw, not meaning to except America where it is bad, nor even Virginia where it is worse than in any other part of America, which I have seen.