I am entirely a farmer, soul and body, never scarcely admitting a sentiment on any other subject

our citizens are divided into two political sects. one which fears the people most, the other the government. you will readily judge in which of these the people themselves are. for my part I have no fear of a people, well-informed, easy in their circumstances, dispersed over their farms, &...

By the breaking of my carriage the first half mile of the journey I am baulked in my intention of being at Dover today. Counting with great certainty upon being there I have not given any orders to D. Nowling about hiring negroes for my Brother John. I wish little Joe and Abraham to be hired for...

I lodge him & find provisions; but give no liquor. this is an absolute article, as I never saw work go on well if the workman had liquor. it is therefore a point which I never give up.

political conversation I really dislike, & therefore avoid where I can without affectation. but when urged by others, I have never concieved that having been in public life requires me to bely my sentiments, nor even to conceal them. when I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with...

In private life Mr. Jefferson displays a mild, easy and obliging temper, though he is somewhat cold and reserved. His conversation is of the most agreeable kind, and he possesses a stock of information not inferior to that of any other man.

I examined with great satisfaction your barometrical estimate of the heights of our mountains, and with the more as they corroborated conjectures on this subject which I had made before. my estimates had made them a little higher than yours (I speak of the blue ridge.) measuring with a very nice...

a more general and certain means of providing for the instruction of the slaves, and more desireable as they would in the course of it be mixed with those of free condition. whether, for their happiness, it should extend beyond those destined to be free, is questionable. ignorance &...

there is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature & fortune have measured to him.

I love to see honest men & honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, & then profit by their measures.

In fine, the bones exist: therefore the animal has existed. The movements of nature are in a never ending circle. The animal species which has once been put into a train of motion, is still probably moving in that train. For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another and another might...