"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."
"I very linearly [sic] wish you would exert yourself so as to keep all your matters in order your self without depending on others as that is the only way to be happy to have all your business in your own hands."
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Source: Martha Washington's letter to Mercy Otis Warren, wife of James Warren, from New York, (December 26, 1789); published in The life of Washington, in the Form of an Autobiography, Volume 2 (p. 181), 1840.
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