The Hammock Papers: Lafayette

Showing posts with label Lafayette. Show all posts

28 June 2026

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Sully, Life Study of The Marquis de Lafayette, 1825

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.

Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, from a letter to his father-in-law on December 4, 1776

Research shows that Lafayette and James Madison met on several occasions. As the two traveled together from September to October 1784, Madison wrote to his father about the meeting ...

I fell in with the Marquis & had his company thus far. He presses me much to fall into his plan, and I am not sure that I shall decline it. It will carry me farther than I had proposed, but I shall be rewarded by the pleasure of his company and the further opportunity of gratifying my curiosity.

Kurt points to the fact that both men understood and practiced the fact that the health of the republic depended on the moral and intellectual qualities of the people who sustained it.

To be a bird among these men.

Whither leadership?

06 September 2025

Happy Birthday, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette

Peale, C.W., Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Motier, Marquis De Lafayette, 1779

The moment I heard of America I loved her; the moment I knew she was fighting for freedom I burnt with a desire of bleeding for her; and the moment I shall be able to serve her, at any time, or in any part of the world, will be the happiest of my life. The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she will become the safe and respected asylum of virtue, integrity, toleration, equality, and tranquil happiness.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette, was born on this day in 1757

31 July 2022

Form.

Morse, Portrait of Lafayette, 1825

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette

When.

Scheffer, Marquis de Lafayette (detail) , 1822

When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

Preserve.

Swear.

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army on this day in 1777.

26 December 2021

Conduct.

Sully, Life Study of the Marquis de Lafayette, 1825

Marquis de Lafayette, from a letter to his father-in-law, December 4, 1776

06 September 2021

Happy Birthday, Lafayette

Peale, Charles Willson, Portrait of Marquis de Lafayette, 1779

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was born on this day 1757.

True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.

Marquis de Lafayette

19 June 2019

Happy Birthday, Sully

Unknown, Thomas Sully, 1865

Thomas Sully was born on this date in 1783.

Sully, Life Study of the Marquis de Lafayette, 1824 ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL