Jeff > Jeff's Quotes

“An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have welcomed Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884. The popular, young New York assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt lost both his beautiful wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and his beloved mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, on Valentine's Day 1884. He gave the infant her mother's name, a wet nurse, a temporary home, and then relegated her to an afterthought. The family turned in upon itself, lost in grief at the sudden and unexpected deaths, too heartbroken to celebrate Alice's birth. It was the last time anything would eclipse Alice Roosevelt.”
― Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“It was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with the piercing sweetness of massed honeysuckle and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Each age wants to see its heroes in its own image, in ways that reflect the pieties and sentiments of its day.”
― Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography

“You can't make me mad by calling me names that are true. Certainly I'm a rascal, and why not? It's a free country and a man may be a rascal if he chooses. It's only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who becomes enraged when called by their right names.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Life is essentially a fatal disease of indeterminate duration.”
― Gene Weingarten, One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America

“Sometimes you have to break a rule to save the system.”
― Dean Koontz, Dragon Tears

“The beast in man had lifted its mask and the time of euphemistic niceties and rationalizations was over.”
― Annette Dumbach, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

“A crystal clear Colorado sky opens above us, a blue so deep it makes you dizzy. The occasional bright white wispy cloud dances across the firmament, punctuating the deep blue vault of heaven stretching over this paradise.”
― Neil Hanson, Pilgrim Wheels: Reflections of a Cyclist Crossing America

“One day during the siege, Grant was observed walking the outer line when he encountered a mule-team driver beating and cursing one of the mules. He ordered the man to stop. The animal’s abuser, seeing a man with a blouse and no sign of rank, turned and began to swear at him. Grant had the man arrested and brought to his headquarters. Only then did the mule driver realize whom he had insulted. The man was ordered to be tied up by his thumbs. When released, the contrite soldier apologized for his language, telling Grant he did not know to whom he was speaking. Grant explained that he had punished the soldier not because of what he’d said to his commanding general: “I could defend myself, but the mule could not.”
― Ronald C. White Jr., American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

“You have to jump around in time to get the facts right. Linear chronology makes for good popular storytelling, but it doesn’t always capture the deep causes that drive history. Some causes are proximate, in the moment. Some are echoes of distant shock waves, still reverberating a hundred—or a thousand—years later.”
― Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt

“An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have welcomed Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884.”
― Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker

“She had a cheerful countenance, and that sometimes disguised her habit of looking on the world with what she called “detached malevolence.”
― Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker