Your affectionate mother requests that I would address to you, as a namesake, something which might have a favorable influence on the course of the life you have to run. Few words are necessary with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself; and your country more than life. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of providence and the life into which you have entered will be passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under regard.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Jefferson Grotjan, January 10, 1824
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