Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph

a mind always employed is always happy. this is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity. the idle are the only wretched. in a world which furnishes so many emploiments which are useful, & so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we we ever know what ennui is, or if we are ever drive to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our disposition, & teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.

PrC (MHi). Published in PTJ, 11:370.
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May 21, 1787
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