Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.
He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward.” Jefferson Davis’s future wife describing him at first meeting.
On Lee as commander: “He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor.
I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.
I think that everything you do helps you to write if you’re a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don’t experience either one of those, you’re being deprived of something.
I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.
We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies.” Politician turned Union General Nathaniel Banks, in plea he couldn’t abandon an untenable position.
A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.
I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.
Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.