Thomas Jefferson

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the
time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit
manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may
be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to
the probable one in which it was passed."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

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"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Francis Willis Jr., 18 April 1790)

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"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better."

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"His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 2 January 1814)