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>Do you know if this is a jefferson quote? "the vagaries of fortune are >strange indeed" If not, do you have any ideas. I don't think that I have ever seen that in Jefferson's writings, and I kinda doubt it is by him. Jefferson speaks frequently of the chance events that fortune brings about, as in the following passage: "When... nations to whom circumstances have given a temporary superiority over others... [throw] off all restraints of morality, all pride of national character, forgetting the mutability of fortune and the inevitable doom which the laws of nature pronounce against departure from justice, individual or national, [and declare] to treat her reclamations with derision and to set up force instead of reason as the umpire of nations, [they degrade] themselves thus from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers and pirates [and abuse] their brief ascendency by desolating the world with blood and rapine. Against such banditti, war [becomes] less ruinous than peace, for then peace [is] a war on one side only." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. (*) ME 13:355 Somehow I feel that Jefferson would not make a statement just affirming what we already know, i.e., that the vagaries of fortune are strange. Were he to remark on fortune, I think he would add something more profound. But, I could be wrong. I notice there is a quote from Edward Gibbon that reads as follows: "Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave." (Decline and Fall, ch. 71) That's the best I can do on that. Best wishes, Eyler Coates