“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity....In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is...”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes. "
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Thomas Jefferson
“All, all dead: and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am not a Federalist because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever....Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility”
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Thomas Jefferson
“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“he repudiated the writings of the Apostle Paul," whom he considered the (first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus”
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Thomas Jefferson
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family”
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Thomas Jefferson
“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
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Thomas Jefferson
