Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother & an instructor.

Health is worth more than learning.

I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

in the spring he will attend your botanical course. his natural turn is very strongly to the objects of your two courses of lectures, and I hope you will have reason to be contended with his capacity & character.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.