nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty, by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. this increases the difficulties tenfold, & those who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at...

if ever you find yourself environed with difficulties & perplexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations. tho’ you cannot see when you fetch one step, what...

the disease of liberty is catching: those armies will take it in the South, carry it thence to their own country spread there the infection of revolution & representative government, and raise it’s people from the prone condition of brutes to the erect attitude of man.

I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in...

presents his compliments to mr Greenleaf and his thanks for the pamphlet on grammar which came to hand yesterday. the torpor of age and drudgery of letterwriting give him little time to read, and little power of profiting by the advances & improvements in every branch of science. he rejoices...

When I retired from this place and the office of Secretary of state, it was in the firmest contemplation of never more returning here. There had indeed been suggestions in the public papers that I was looking towards a succession to the President’s chair. But feeling a consciousness of their...

it is more a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies....

Charlottesville—82 miles from Richmond, is celebrated as the Seat of Jefferson College or the University of Virginia. This institution owes its origin to the Late Thos Jefferson former president of the U. St. who devoted the latter part of his ever active life, towards the promotion of Science ...

I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character it should be in terms like these. His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, tho’ not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon or Locke;...

the President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity.