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Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 17 May 1818 [Quote]

my repugnance to the writing table becomes daily & hourly more deadly & insurmountable. in place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. and I indulge it: because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path thro’ the dreary wilderness of time...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 12 Jan. 1819 [Quote]

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie’s, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. I feel a much greater interest in knowing what passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing therefore but of the...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 31 Oct. 1819 [Quote]

I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their doctrines dogmas, being hypocrisy and...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 4 Aug. 1820 [Quote]

this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus. we find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. first a ground work of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, & fabrications. intermixed...

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, 6 Oct. 1820 [Quote]

your Latin & Greek should be kept up assiduously by reading at spare hours: and, discontinuing the desultory reading of the schools. I would advise you to undertake a regular course of history & poetry in both languages. in Greek, go first thro’ the Cyropaedia, and then read Herodotus,...