1Silence Dogood, No. 14, 8 October 1722 (Franklin Papers)
Ovid, Metamorphoses,
2To Benjamin Franklin from Cadwallader Colden, 20 May 1752 (Franklin Papers)
Ovid, Metamorphoses,
3VIII. “U” to the Boston Gazette, 5 September 1763 (Adams Papers)
...concern for the future. / You are able to fight: / You are outstanding only in body; I am outstanding in intellect. / My mind is superior to my hand. All my force is in my mind. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 13:363–369, with some lines and parts of lines omitted.)
4From John Jay to Robert R. Livingston, 1 May 1765 (Jay Papers)
You will travel safest in the middle course. From Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.137.
5To Benjamin Franklin from Jonathan Shipley, 22 September 1782 (Franklin Papers)
The sweet consolation of old age: Ovid, Metamorphoses,
Nos duo turba sumus; possedit cetera pontus (we two are all the population; the sea has claimed the rest): Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 1, line 355, trans. D. E. Hill (Warminster, Eng., and Oak Park, Ill., 1985), pp. 26–7.
7To James Madison from Walter Jones, 25 March 1790 (Madison Papers)
Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. I, lines 18–19: “ .” The English translation reads: “for within one body cold things strove with hot, and moist with dry” (Ovid: Metamorphoses, Loeb Classical Library [1916; 2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1966 reprint], I, 2–3).
8John Quincy Adams to John Adams, 21 September 1790 (Adams Papers)
It is allowable to learn even from an enemy (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV, line 428).
9John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 2 April 1791 (Adams Papers)
I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VII, lines 20–21).
10Abigail Adams to John Quincy Adams, [ca. 28 September 1795] (Adams Papers)
See Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV, line 609–610.