Mr Jefferson left us on Monday. He desired me to inform you that he would write to you from Fredericsburg or Alexiandria, his business having rendered it impossible from Richmond. He tells you likewise by me, that you may make yourself perfectly easy about the affair mentioned in your letter, and...

3. Moral philosophy. ... man was destined for society. his morality therefore was to be formed to this object. he was endowed with a sense of right & wrong merely relative to this. this sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling ... the moral sense, or...

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...

nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty, by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. this increases the difficulties tenfold, & those who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at...

if ever you find yourself environed with difficulties & perplexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations. tho’ you cannot see when you fetch one step, what...

As I could not be with you to read to you what I had written I leave it for you. My conversation with gentlemen here has made me think lighter of those infamous stories than I did: therefore I have not sent it to the Gazette as I intended: it being necessary to put my name to a paragraph such as...

be good, be learned, & be industrious, & you will not want the aid of travelling to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I repeat my advice to take a great deal of exercise, & on foot. health is the first requisite after morality.

above all things lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, couragious etc. consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties, & increase your worth.

5. Travelling. ... when men of sober age travel, they gather knowlege which they may apply usefully for their country

4. Religion. your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. in the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. it is too important, & the consequences of error may be too...