Time at present does not give me the means to make a long epistle, & Indeed if it was not on Fs account you should not hear from me for a week or so. I imagined that I told you all I knew respecting the university but as you say not, I must tell you the same tale over again. there is no...

You must attribute my silence to this infernal play which has taken up all the spare time I had & is not yet acted, god grant that it never may be, for it will afford the young Ladies a good opportunity of being witty at our expence, but that is a thing of course, for their conversation ...

... such is the testimony given me by Mr. Hale, the author of a History of the United States, who numbered among the most fortunate incidents of his life that he made a visit to Monticello. Mr. Jefferson welcomed him, scarcely noticing his letters of introduction, and at once made his...

peace & prosperity are twin-brothers; so are war & demoralisation.

the eyes of our citizens are not yet sufficiently open to the true cause of our distresses. they ascribe them to every thing but their true cause, the banking system; a system, which, if it could do good in any form, is yet so certain of leading to abuse, as to be utterly incompatible with the...

books are indeed with me a necessary of life; and since I ceded my library to Congress I have been annually importing from Paris.

I am happy in this comfortable view of things, and have taken with contentedness the early and humble place in the procession which the master of the ceremony assigned to me. if I have walked straight, I have done my part; if awry, the train which follows will correct the line of march. to them...

all the states but our own are sensible that knolege is power. the Missouri question is for power. the efforts now generally making thro’ the states to advance their science is for power, while we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect like them to oppose by ignorance...

it would seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. no government can continue good but under the controul of the people: and their people were so demoralised and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholsome controul. their reformation then was to be taken up ab...

“On Monday last, our court day in Charlottesville, we were gratified in seeing together, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, the three most illustrious men of Virginia, and successive Presidents of the U. States. The presence of these gentlemen, two of whom have filled with distinguished...