My father was riding one evening with Mr Jefferson and had been commenting upon the character of George Washington in a tone which elicited the following from Mr Jefferson who stopping his horse and pointing to the heavens exclaimd “Yes Sir, when names now great are gone & forgotten, His ...

My father read law under Mr Jefferson’s direction, and once became uncertain in his own mind whether the practice of law was compatible with perfect truthfulness, he once asked Mr Jefferson “do you believe in he once said to Mr Jefferson “I have made up my mind never to utter a word with my lips,...

This very day, to others the day of greatest mirth and jollity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for these thousand years past I am sure.

it’s not just students and Presidents, it is every American–indeed, every human life ever touched by the daring idea of self-government–that Mr. Jefferson has influenced.

The pursuit of science, the study of the great works, the value of free inquiry, in short, the very idea of the living the life of the mind–yes, these formative and abiding principles of higher education in America had their first and firmest advocate, and their greatest embodiment, in a tall,...

be good, be learned, & be industrious, & you will not want the aid of travelling to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I repeat my advice to take a great deal of exercise, & on foot. health is the first requisite after morality.

above all things lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, couragious etc. consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties, & increase your worth.

I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.

Mr. Jefferson was not a man who could be regarded as an eminent conversationalist. He was rather reserved; and did not often enter into great questions—political or moral—in my presence.

money, & not morality is the principle of commerce & commercial nations.