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The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.
Jefferson was about six feet in height, large-boned, slim, erect and sinewy. He had angular features, a very ruddy complexion, sandy hair and hazel-flecked, grey eyes. Age lessened the unattractiveness of his exterior. In later years he was negligent in dress and loose in bearing. There was grace, nevertheless, in his manners; and his frank and earnest address, his quick sympathy (yet he seemed cold to strangers), his vivacious, desultory, informing talk gave him an engaging charm. Beneath a quiet surface he was fairly aglow with intense convictions and a very emotional temperament. Yet he seems to have acted habitually, in great and little things, on system. His mind, no less trenchant and subtle than Hamilton's, was the most impressible, the most receptive, mind of his time in America. The range of his interests is remarkable. For many years he was president of the American Philosophical Society. Though it is a biographical tradition that he lacked wit, Moliere and Don Quixote seem to have been his favorites; and though the utilitarian wholly crowds romanticism out of his writings, he had enough of that quality in youth to prepare to learn Gaelic in order to translate Ossian, and sent to Macpherson for the originals! His interest in art was evidently intellectual. He was singularly sweet-tempered, and shrank from the impassioned political bitterness that raged about him; bore with relative equanimity a flood of coarse and malignant abuse of his motives, morals, religion, personal honesty and decency; cherished very few personal animosities; and better than any of his great antagonists cleared political opposition of ill-blooded personality. In short, his kindness of heart rose above all social, religious or political differences, and nothing destroyed his confidence in men and his sanguine views of life.
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On matters of religion, Jefferson was sympathetic to Deism, which was fashionable among the intellectuals of his time. Although he believed in a God, ("Nature's God", as the deity was commonly called by Deists), this God was a distant god, not concerned with the affairs of humanity.
Moreover, he did not believe in miracles. Indeed, at one point he edited the Gospels to remove all reference to the miracles of Jesus and material he considered overly religious, leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible. This was later printed in some 2,500 copies for the United States Congress in 1903.
Jefferson believed in the separation between church and state, opining, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government" (Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813), and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" (Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814).
Jefferson was influenced heavily by the ideas of Polish brethren.
Englishman John Bidle had translated two works by said Przypkowski ; also the Racovian Catechism; and a work by J. Stegmann, a "Polish Brother" from Germany.
Bidle's followers had very close relations with the Polish Socinian family of Crellius (aka Spinowski).
Subsequently, the Unitarian branch of Christianity was continued with by, most notably, Joseph Priestley, who had emigrated to the U. S. A. and was a friend of both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson's political principles were also heavily influenced by John Locke, particularly relating to the principles of inalienable rights and popular sovereignty.
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