if our legislature does not heartily push our University we must send our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. the latter will return them to us fanatics & tories, the former will keep them to add to their population if however we are to go a begging any where for our education, I...

the banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish treaty are nothing. these are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. but the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, & what more, God only knows. from the battle of Bunker’s hill...

while too weak to set up the whole day, and afraid to increase the weakness by lying down, I longed for a Siesta chair which would have admitted the medium position.

among the values of classical learning I estimate the Luxury of reading the Greek & Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals ... I think myself more indebted to my father for this, than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my reach.

my measure is a perfectly sober one of 3. or 4. glasses at dinner, & not a drop at any other time. but in as to these 3. or 4. glasses Je suis bien friand.

were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. my fundamental. principle would be ... that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not...

I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour’s previous reading of something moral whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. but whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print.

I shall want a supply of good corks to bottle our beer and cyder, as soon as they can be got. it is so provoking to lose good liquor by bad corks

I rejoice, as a Moralist, at the prospect of a reduction of the duties on wine, by our national legislature. it is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich it is a prohibition of it’s use to the midling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to the poison of...

form the statesmen, legislators & judges, on whom public prosperity, & individual happiness are so much to depend.