I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus & Thucydides, for Newton & Euclid; & I find myself much the happier.

I shall give over reading newspapers. they are so false & so intemperate that they disturb tranquility without giving information.

I send for Cornelia a little poem, the grasshopper’s ball, to begin her collection.

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