Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 841 |
| AUTHOR: | Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) |
| QUOTATION: | Perfect happiness I believe was never intended by the deity to be the lot of any one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I as stedfastly believe. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | This letter was written in hopes that John Page would talk to Belinda, a young woman with whom Jefferson, then 20, was infatuated. Jefferson was normally cool and level-headed, but Belinda had a devastating effect on his poise, leaving him tongue-tied and stammering.—Saul K. Padover, Jefferson, chapter 2, p. 20 (1942). |
| SUBJECTS: | Happiness |