John Adams to Samuel Quincy. c. 1758

How resolutely, how inviolably, how surprizingly we have preserv'd and pursued The Resolution we took of writing each other upon Law. Points of Law, which we took at Weighmouth. -- But Oh my Friend how easily we are bro't fired to lawdable Determinations! But oh proh Dolor, how soon are such Determinations forgot? -- Quite as suddenly as the Vows of perpetual Constancy made by a young Fellow, when in the most violent Hurry. This [illegible] has some how or other recalled to my Memory a Pice of Advice, which Polonius gives to his Daughter in Shakespears Hamlet.

I do know When the Blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the Tongue Vows. These Blazes oh my Daughter Giving more Light than Heat, extinct in both, You must not take for Fire.

The soul is no less Prodigal in lending the Tongue Vows, when the Blood glows with Ambition of getting Learning or Virtue, than when it burns with a very different Passion, the Passion alluded to in these Lines. And perhaps the Protestations of the Lover, are as sincere [illegible] as the Resolutions of the scholar. And as the generous Lover, who by such Vows, has deceived and has and deflowered an innocent, virtuous Lady, would think him self bound in Honour, and in Conscience, to fullfill his Promises, so should the generous Schollar esteem it a violation of his Conscience, a base, ungenerous, debauching and ruining of himself, to forget his Vows of Industry.

For my own Part, my Conscience reproaches me with a long long series of such Self Perfidy! I start sometimes, and shudder at myself, when the Thought comes into my mind how many [illegible] million Hours I have squandered in a stupid Inactivity neither furnishing my mind nor exercising my Body. Yet I continue to new Reflections continue to arise, and I every Day determine to begin a new Course of Life tomorrow. My Resolutions are like bubbles, [illegible] they are perpetually rising to the surface of the stream [illegible] and then are [broke?] and vanish by every puff of Wind. [illegible] Yet new ones rise and die in perpetual succession.

The first page of Adams' earliest diary fragment, housed by the Mass Historical Society

source: John Adams diary, June 1753 - April 1754, September 1758 - January 1759 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/

transcription: Butterfield, L.H., ed. The Earliest Diary of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1966.

#commonplace #JohnAdams #Harvard #18thcentury