Weary of Thucydides and Tacitus

John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 3 February 1812

“I have read Thucidides and Tacitus, So often, and at Such distant Periods of my Life, that elegant, profound and enchanting as is their Style, I am weary of them. When I read them I Seem to be only reading the History of my own Times and my own Life. I am heartily weary of both; i.e. of recollecting the History of both: for I am not weary of Living. Whatever a peevish Patriarch might Say, I have never yet Seen the day in which I could Say I have had no Pleasure; or that I have had more Pain than Pleasure.”