David McCullough, "John Adams" 에서

David McCullough, "John Adams" (2001)

 

"I cannot help suspecting that the more elegance, the less virtue

in all times and countries." ... Adams's objections stemmed not

so much from a Puritan background ... but from the ideal of

republic virtue, the classic Roman stoic emphasis on simplicity

and the view that decadence inevitably followed luxury, age-old

themes replete in the writings of his favorite Romans. (p 192)

 

Adams thought women superior to men overall, as [his wife]

Abigail knew. (p 193)

 

Let us have ambition enough to keep our simplicity, our

frugality, and our integrity, and transmit these virtues as the

fairest of inheritance to our children. (p 238) [Adams 가

Abigail 에게 쓴 편지에서]

 

He was desperate for books to be sent -- Hume, Johnsom,

Priestly, Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, "and a Plutarch in French or

English." (p 409)

 

Jefferson's abiding flaw, Adams had concluded, was

"want of sincerity." (p 475)

 

To Catherine Johnson, [아들] John Quincy's mother-in-

law, she[Abigail] described how the beauties of her

garden, "from the window at which I write ... the full

bloom of the pear, the apple, the plum and peach,"

helped her forget the past and rejoice. "Envy nips not

their buds, calumny destroys not thier fruits, nor does

ingratitude tarnish their colors." (p 571)

 

He had read Cicero's essay on growing old gracefully,

De Senectute, for seventy years, to the point of nearly

knowing it by heart, but never had it given such joy as

on his most recent reading, he told another

correspondent. (p 629)

 

Once, in a letter to his old friend, Francis van der Kemp,

he had written, "Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments

upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry

world notwithstanding." (p 651)