1John Adams to Abigail Adams, 26 February 1783 (Adams Papers)
“A Court,” as John Dryden informed me, before Experience, “is a place of forgetfulness for well deservers. It is infectious even to the best Morals to live always in it. It is a dangerous Commerce where an honest Man is sure at the first of being cheated; and he recovers not his losses, but by learning to cheat others. The undermining Smile becomes at length habitual; and the drift of his...