From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.

It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

Peace is our passion.

[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.