Factual Thomas Jefferson Quotes & Sayings

I can tell the difference between the acts of a man and the acts of God. That's why I still believe. I could always tell the difference. — Dee Henderson

We are not alone, and whether it is the Confiteor mentioned above or the "Lord have mercy," the opening prayers of the liturgy acknowledge that we are a community that hurts one another but also a community that forgives one another. It is through the experience of being forgiven that we can also begin to heal and grow in our humanity. The — David Matzko McCarthy

The United States owes a great debt to its inventors. Far from being grateful to them, it places every obstruction in their way and makes it enormously difficult to secure a patent. — Preston Sturges

You are such a jerk! Get back here!"
"Jerk?" he repeated. " You're the one spying in windows. — Becca Fitzpatrick

A sharp spear needs no polish. — H. Rider Haggard

I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the contents of his own head, a set of options and imaginative alternatives. His role is that of a scientist, whether on safari or in his laboratory, faced with an unknown terrain or subject. All he can do is to devise various hypotheses and test them against the facts. — J.G. Ballard

Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant ... As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden. — C.S. Lewis

It is a funny thing. A man can make a promise to his God, break it five minutes later and never think about it. With an idle shrug of his shoulders, a man can break solemn promises to his mother, wife or sweetheart, and, except for a slight momentary twinge of conscience, he still won't be bothered very much. But if a man ever breaks a promise to himself he disintegrates. His entire personality and character crumble into tiny pieces, and he is never the same man again.
I remember very well a sergeant I knew in the army. Before a group of five men he swore off smoking forever. An hour later he sheepishly lit a cigarette and broke his vow to the five of us and to himself. He was never quite the same man again, not to me, and not to himself. — Charles Willeford

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.
(The Course of Human Events, NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003) — David McCullough