wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.

travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement.

we can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone without bloodshed. But the world is too far oppressed to profit of the example.

the example we have given to the world is single, that of changing the form of our government under the authority of reason only, without bloodshed.

I was much pleased with many & essential parts of this instrument from the beginning. but I thought I saw in it many faults, great & small. what I have read & reflected has brought me over from several of my objections of the first moment, and to acquiesce under some others.

they have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other, and the art to cultivate it beyond all others. there is no part of the earth where so much of this is enjoyed as in America.

but Botany is the school for patience, and it’s amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments.

I am but a son of nature, loving what I see & feel, without being able to give a reason, nor caring much whether there be one.

nothing in Europe can counterbalance the freedom, the simplicity, the friendship & the domestic felicity we enjoy in America.

you know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.