Health, learning, and virtue will insure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honor.
If I were to decide between the pleasures derived from the classical
education which my father gave me, and the estate left me, I should
decide in favor of the farmer.
Good humor and politeness never introduce into mixed society a question
on which they foresee there will be a difference of opinion.
The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their
hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have
any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the
sinks of voluntary misery.
I have often thought that if Heaven had given me choice of my position
and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered,
and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation
is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture
comparable to that of the garden.
I sincerely, then, believe with you in the general existence of a moral
instinct. I think it is the brightest gem with which the human character
is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous
of the bodily deformities.
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