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

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...

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

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...

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...

Juliana Annesley (Maxwell) to Martha Jefferson (Randolph), 20 April 1786

Allow me my Dear Girl to profit of the promise you have made me to correspond with me, and as I cannot bear the least shadow of formality between friends, I shall thro’ the whole of this letter endeavour to put away the remembrance of its being the first letter; I hope you will follow my example....

Juliana Annesley (Maxwell) to Martha Jefferson (Randolph), 27 April 1786

I am very angry with my Dear Jeffy for not having yet answered my Letter and am resolved to be revenged by not speaking to you for 100 years to come if I do not hear from you this very day I like punctual correspondants, therefore in your letter tell me if you can answer me to all my notes—I am...