Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Fitzhugh, 27 May 1813 [Quote]
we have in our family ... looms fixed with flying shuttles, which altho’ they do not perform the miracles ascribed to them, do, I think, double the effect of the common loom.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 31 May 1813 [Quote]
on the subject of religion, a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his maker, in which no other, & far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 19 June 1813 [Quote]
it is more a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies....
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813 [Quote]
our government has not, as yet, begun to act on the rule of loans & taxation going hand in hand. had any loan taken place in my time, I should have strongly urged a redeeming tax. for the loan which has been made since the last session of Congress, we should now set the example of...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813 [Quote]
the earth belongs to the living ... the soil is the gift of God to the living.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813 [Quote]
if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Waldo, 16 Aug. 1813 [Quote]
certainly so great and growing a population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it answer it’s purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Wilson, 17 Aug. 1813 [Quote]
I am a friend to the reformation generally of whatever can be made better
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 22 Aug. 1813 [Quote]
leaving little time for indulgence in my greatest of all amusements, reading.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Canby, 18 Sept. 1813 [Quote]
of all the systems of morality antient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 12 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
we must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus ... there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
the artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendancy.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
the law for religious freedom ... put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make it the key-stone of the arch of our government.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
before the establishment of the American states, nothing was known to History but the Man of the old world, crouded within limits either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation generates.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of Man. science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people. an insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents & courage against rank and...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 [Quote]
a constitution has been acquired which, tho neither of us think perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow-citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Madame de Tessé, 8 Dec. 1813 [Quote]
we have taken their Upper Canada, and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to remove them fully and finally from our continent. and what they will feel more, for they value their colonies only for...
Extract from Elizabeth Trist to Catharine Wistar Bache, 13 Dec. 1813 [Quote]
I have received a few days since a renewal of Mr Jeffersons constant friendship and wishes for my health and happiness with a little work entitled intercepted letters which he says may make me laugh on a gloomy day that it has the merit too of giving us a peep behind the curtain at those...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Alexis Marie Rochon, 14 Dec. 1813 [Quote]
I am glad to learn that you are shewing us the way to supply ourselves with some of the most necessary tropical productions, and that the bette-rave, which we can all raise, promises to supplant the cane particularly, and to silence the demand for the inhuman species of labour employed in it’s...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, 29 Dec. 1813 [Quote]
I have near 100. spindles in operation for clothing our own family.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Leiper, 1 Jan. 1814 [Quote]
I cannot act as if all men were unfaithful because some are so; nor believe that all will betray me, because some do. I had rather be the victim of occasional infidelities, than relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of man.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 2 Jan. 1814 [Quote]
I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character it should be in terms like these. His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, tho’ not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon or Locke;...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 10 Feb. 1814 [Quote]
I promised you a sample from my Commonplace book ... when I was a student of the law, now half a century ago, after getting thro Coke Littleton, whose matter cannot be abridged, I was in the habit of abridging and commonplacing what I read meriting it, and of sometimes mixing my own reflections...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 22 Feb. 1814 [Quote]
but with this objection, lying but in a small degree, Linnaeus’s method was recieved, understood, and conventionally settled among the learned, and was even getting into common use. to disturb it then was unfortunate. the new systems attempted in Botany, by Jussieu, in Mineralogy, by Haüy, are...