I find more amusement in studies to which I
was always more
attached, and from which I was dragged by the events of the times in which I have
happened to
live.
not in our day; but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. but I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
I trouble you now with a piece of business. on the destruction of the library of Congress, I thought it a duty to offer them mine. I had been 50. years collecting it, with good opportunities, and it’s selection, more than it’s number of volumes had peculiarly adapted it to their uses. I must now...
I presume, like the rest of us in the country, you are in the habit of houshold manufacture, and that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence & intrigues cost us so much...
yet experience & frequent disappointment have taught me not to be over-confident in theories or calculations, until actual trial has stam of the whole combination has stamped it with approbation.
if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. there is no safe deposit for these but with the...
for the present I confine myself to the physical want of some good Montepulciano ... perhaps I may trouble you annually to about the same amount, this being a very favorite wine, and habit having rendered the light and high flavored wines a necessary of life with me.
I would strongly recommend to their consideration, instead of one immense building, to have a small one for every professorship, arranged at proper distances around a square, or rather three sides of a square, to admit extension, connected by a piazza so that they may go dry from one school to...
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...
To this a single observation shall yet be added. Whether property alone, and the whole of what each citizen possesses, shall be subject to contribution, or only it’s surplus after satisfying his first wants, or whether the faculties of body and mind shall contribute also from their annual...
I might have manifested my dissatisfaction by a silent reserve of all answer: but this would have offered a blank, which might have been filled up by erroneous imputations of sentiment. I prefer candid and open expression.
while you endeavor, by a good store of learning, to prepare yourself to become an useful and distinguished member of your country you must remember that this can never be, without uniting merit with your learning. honesty, disinterestedness, and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem...