Motherhood sort of puts things into perspective, and it's bout real life, and life is about people, what we give, what we take, what we share.
Thomas Jefferson survives.
The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
It will be celebrated. . . with pomp and parade. . . bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.
Then there's the joy of getting your desk clean, and knowing that all your letters are answered, and you can see the wood on it again.
It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Those who think that metaphysics is just misunderstood grammar will react to my giving metaphysics some place or another in the system of knowledge.
They started something here, and the kids are keeping the ball rolling.