Perhaps you think you have nothing to say to me ... there is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me ... Write then my dear daughter punctually on your day

interesting occupations are essential to happiness: indeed the whole art of being happy consists in the art of finding emploiment.

the happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family.

my method is to make two observations a day, the one as early as possible in the morning, the other from 3. to 4. aclock, because I have found 4. aclock the hottest & day light the coldest point of the 24. hours. I state them in an ivory pocket book in the following form, & copy them out...

do not neglect your music, it will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.

we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed.

the ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. it takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living:’ that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. the portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, & reverts to the society.

we have spent the prime of our lives in procuring them the precious blessing of liberty. let them spend theirs in shewing that it is the great parent of science & of virtue; and that a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free.

I will put off till my return from America all of them except Bacon, Locke and Newton, whose pictures I will trouble you to have copied for me: and as I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived.