I had, at an early period of life, read a good deal on the subject, & common placed what I read.

some of the most agreeable moments of my life have been spent in reading works of imagination

I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

I am for encouraging the progress of science in all it’s branches

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution; I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of it’s constitution; I mean an additional article taking from the federal government the power...

What the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice has assented to, & accepted over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country, & it’s laws had pledged hospitality &...

politics & party hatreds destroy the happiness of every being here. they seem, like salamanders, to consider fire as their element.

science never appears so beautiful as when applied to the uses of human life, nor any use of it so engaging as agriculture & domestic economy.

I do not think it for the interest of the general government itself, & still less of the Union at large, that the state governments should be so little respected as they have been. however I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round...

as to myself I sincerely wish that the whole Union may accomodate their interests to each other, & play into their hands mutually as members of the same family, that the wealth & strength of any one part should be viewed as the wealth & strength of the whole.