Richard Brookhiser Quotes

Lincoln had a stubborn concern for first principles.

Dominance can be a tempration to division. "There are so many of us, we can afford to fight amongst ourselves.

It was as simple as walking and as hard as walking on with so far gone and so far yet to go.

She became at once more intimate and more exalted.

Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.

Most principles are limp until they are tested.

One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

The towering genius is not apolitical.

Since we never get everything we want or need from our families, we look for sufficiency in surrogates.

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.

Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.

Lincoln Road that sorrow is most difficult for the young because it, "takes them unawares." The old, he said, have learned to anticipate difficulty. Lincoln wrote that sorrow is most difficult for the young because it, "takes them unawares." The old, he said, have learned to anticipate difficulty.

Young, healthy communities can afford to roll the dice.

Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.

Lincoln told a family friend that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.

To use the past, he had to save it from aspects of itself.

Any man's life can be seen as a series of engagements with his fathers, Including the surrogates provided by life and literature.

Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.

The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.

Lincoln bore down or anything he handled, mastering both the details and the principles.

Depression can seem absurdly self aggrandizing to those who do not experience it, But that does not make it any less painful to those who do.

She noticed, as an exceptional woman would, that her stepson was exceptional.

Lincoln was a master of small group theatrics.

As with almost every long oration, there were loose ends.

Lincoln loved other people's jokes as much as his own.

Lincoln began to emerge from his funk by helping a coworker who looked up to him out of a funk of his own.

A storyteller, a displaced poet, will absorb reading differently.

God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces.

Lincoln learned to summon the passions, but he never addressed his audience as sweethearts.