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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

It would be a stretch to call Thomas Jefferson a homesteader. Nonetheless, 
he embodied many of the characteristics of same. T.J. was an 
independently-minded agriculturist who, with substantial slave help, grew 
most of his household's food needs on his own land. He collected and 
experimented with plants from many places. The gardens at Monticello are 
today visited by thousands yearly. They include fruits, vegetables and 
ornamentals large in number. His mind was magnificent. Here are a few of 
his quotes:

"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

"Determine never to be idle. . . It is wonderful how much may be done if we 
are always doing."

"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath 
it."

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and 
mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and 
Romans, and must be that of every free state."

"I cannot live without books."

"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself 
infinitely the happier for it."

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have 
of it."

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand 
like a rock."

"Never spend your money before you have it." [Do as he advises, not as he 
lived; he had a lifelong problem with following his own advice on this one.]

"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."