HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: thomas paine · secret correspondence · rights and liberties · language, naming, and meaning · justice as a virtue · common sense
Usually: letter or document (1) · crisis of belief (1) · temptation (1) · censure (1) · praise (1)
“My ease, my domestic happiness, my rural pleasures, my little property, my personal liberty, my reputation, my life, have little weight and ever had in my own estimation, in comparison with the great object of my country.” John Adams (as compiled/edited by Charles Francis Adams), Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail · insight
John Adams responds to Abigail’s letters, praises her secrecy, recounts his devotion to American interests over personal comfort, and assesses Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—approving its sense while criticizing its constitutional plans.
persons and places, or any other circumstances which might designate to strangers the writer, or the person written to, or the persons mentioned. Characters and description will do as well. The lie which you say occasioned such disputes at the tavern was curious enough. Who could make and spread it? I am much obliged to an uncle for his friendship. My worthy fellow-citizens may be easy about me. I never can forsake …