Abigail Adams Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

Let us be just, and we shall not be miserable.

Abigail Adams
Heaven avert the dangers which threaten us, and as we reside in a glass House, may our politicians beware of throwing stones.

Abigail Adams
May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.

Abigail Adams
If our cause is just, it will be best supported by justice and righteousness. Though we have many other crimes to answer for, that of cruelty to our enemies is not chargeable upon Americans, and I hope never will be.

Abigail Adams
I must entreat you to remember me often. I never think your letters half long enough.

Abigail Adams
To be attentive to our guests is not only true kindness, but true politeness: for if there is a virtue which is its own reward, hospitality is that virtue. We remember slight attentions, after we have forgotten great benefits...

Abigail Adams
I will never consent to have our sex considered an inferior point of light. Let each planet shine in their own orbit. God and nature designed it so—if man is Lord, woman is Lordess—that is what I contend for.

Abigail Adams
No Man has more of my compassion and commiseration than he who Stands upon the giddy height of the pinnacle.

Abigail Adams
I hope the rage for foreign conquest will not ever seize upon Americans.

Abigail Adams
But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

Abigail Adams
What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.

Abigail Adams
Our countrymen create most of the misfortunes they feel, for want of a disinterested spirit, a confidence in each other, and a union of the whole. It is a great misfortune, when one State thwarts the measures of eleven or twelve, and thus injures the credit and reputation of the whole.

Abigail Adams
I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me — to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.

Abigail Adams
Every benevolent mind revolts at the Idea of Foreign powers forcing a Ruler upon a Nation, the majority of which reject him.

Abigail Adams
I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.

Abigail Adams
I am sometimes led to think that human nature is a very perverse thing, and much more given to evil than to good.

Abigail Adams
The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex, was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned.

Abigail Adams
I hate to complain. No one is without their difficulties, whether in High, or low Life, & every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.

Abigail Adams
Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.

Abigail Adams
There is something always melancholy in the Idea of leaving a place for the last time. It is like burying a Friend.

Abigail Adams
May you never want either pleasure or amusement. We were made for active Life, and idleness and happiness are incompatible.

Abigail Adams
My pen is always freer than my tongue. I have written many things to you that I suppose I never could have talked.

Abigail Adams
How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.

Abigail Adams
I am happy in a daughter who is both a companion and an assistant in my Family affairs and who I think has a prudence and steadiness beyond her years.

Abigail Adams
And now let me ask you, my friend, whether you do not think, that many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.

Abigail Adams