The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson

By Subject

RETIREMENT / SECRETARY OF STATE

I am to thank you for the book you were so good as to transmit me, as well as the letter covering it, and your felicitations On my present quiet. The difference of my present and past situation is such as to leave me nothing to regret, but that my retirement has been postponed four years too long. The principles on which I calculated the value of life, are entirely in favor of my present course. I return to farming with an ardor which I scarcely knew in my youth, and which has got the better entirely of my love of study. Instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I have been in the habit of doing as a thing of course, I put off answering my letters now, farmer-like, till a rainy day, and then find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations.

to George Washington, 25 April 1794