41From John Adams to George Washington Adams, 3 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
Some of Jobs afflictions and some of Jobs comforts have prevented my answering your letters, as far as no 30. I hope you will persever in stud y ing Barbaracque. I hope you will critically study his Notes and his quotations in latin and Greek from the Ancients. Endeavour to pick and search out their meaning.— Mr Russells letter and your Fathers remarks are arrived and running the round of...
42From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 14 January 1826 (Adams Papers)
Permit me to introduce to your acquaintance, a young Lawyer by the name of Josiah Quincy, and with the title of Coll. being an Aid to our Governor. The name of Coll. Quincy has never I believe been extinct for two hundred years. He is a Son of our excellent Mayor of the City of Boston and possesses a character unstained and irreproachable. I applaud his ambition to visit Monticello and its...
43From John Adams to Alexander Bryan Johnson, 12 February 1823 (Adams Papers)
Of making and reading Books, there is no end, And therefore it is hardly worth while to make a begining except for the necessary purposes of common life; I have never been afraid of a Book.—Brand Hollis, my Friend, said to me, there never was a bad book in the World.—Perhaps a Man of Sense and rectitude might learn something from any one; But there are many bad Books, and I have read...
44From John Adams to Emma Willard, 11 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
Accept my thanks for your obliging letter of the 25 of last month which I received but yesterday—the Book you mention is not yet arrived—I should be much pleased to see Mr Southwicks address, as I am a friend to every effort to improve the knowledge Virtue and happiness of our laborious Youth— I do not complain, Miss Willard, of the ingratitude of any party because I always endeavoured to be...
45From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 18 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
I pretend not to preserve any order, in my Letters to you. I give you hints, as they accidently occur to me, which, an hundred years hence, may be considered as Memoires pour Servir a l’histoire des Etas Unis.—I am about to write to you the most melancholly Letter, I ever wrote in my Life. One, which the most deeply touches my Soul with Greif.—And now, I know not where to begin, nor how to...
46From John Adams to John C. Gray, 24 July 1822 (Adams Papers)
My Friendship for your family must be my apology for neglecting so long to acknowledge the receipt of your Oration, I presume to reckon among my friends, your Grand Father Mr Chipman of Marble Head—he was a Brother barrester at law, And I spent a week with him in the year 1764 in the same house and at the same Court in Pownalborough and found him an able lawyer, and an amiable Man; though we...
47From John Adams to Benjamin Owen Tyler, 19 July 1818 (Adams Papers)
I have recd your favour from Richmond of July 4 I cannot write long letters. When you visit Boston do not forget Quincy the residence of your Ancestors for almost 200 years. Your Grandmother had an elder sister who Married Mr Joshua Bracket and a brother Benjamin. I should be glad to know something of all these for I believe it is twenty years since I have any thing of any of them When you...
48From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 10 May 1821 (Adams Papers)
My thanks are due to you, and are most joyfully given, for two copies of your Report on Weights and Measures, one of them elegantly bound. Though I cannot say and perhaps shall never be able to say that I have read it, yet I have turned over Leaves of it enough to see that it is a Mass of historical, philosophical chemical mathematical and political knowledge which no Industry in this country...
49From John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 25 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your favour of the 19th and the return of the Pamphlet with a Copy. You revive me when you assure me, that the Original “Principles of the revolution are coming again into fashion: and that foreign feelings are opening giving Way to a national Character” As you are “Zealous to help on the latter,” I Should be happy, if I could, to help you. As doubts and questions are easily...
50From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 29 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
If I am not humble I ought to be, when I find myself under the necessity of borrowing a juvenile hand to acknowledge your kind favour of the 19.th: I have read your university report throughout with great pleasure, and hearty approbation; Of Tracy’s report I have read as much as I could, the translation appears to me an original written with all the purity, accuracy, and elegance, of its...