America's First Daughter Quotes

“I’ll tell you a secret about being happy, Tom. Sometimes you just have to pretend at it until it becomes real.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Why was it that women were expected to restrain our every passion for the sake of propriety, but men couldn't do it even for the sake of the women they loved?”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“When the heart finds its one true desire, any separation and delay is unbearable.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Sons of a revolution fight for liberty. They give blood, flesh, limbs, their very lives. But daughters . . . we sacrifice our eternal souls.”
― Laura Kamoie, America's First Daughter

“From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“I now saw union between man and woman was the same as union among the states—as a series of debates and compromises that might hold it all together for a few more years, or end in a painful separation.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“I’m not only my father’s daughter, but also a daughter of the nation he founded. And protecting both is what I’ve always done.”
― Laura Kamoie, America's First Daughter

“Spoken words fail me where my pen rarely does.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive.” I”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“But women have to give hard thought to the men we'll wind up with. Make a mistake and get a drunk, a spendthrift, a cruel man. A man who won't keep his word. ... In marriage, man and woman become one, and that one is the husband.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder. But now we’d do more than patch with needle and thread. We’d have to weave together a whole tapestry of American life with nothing but our own hands, our own crops, and our own ingenuity. And I would prove myself able to the task. There”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“It pains me to be an embarrassment to you, but I don't know how to remedy my flaws. All I know is that whenever I feel strongly compelled to act, a doubt always arises. And whereas the voice of reason is low and persuasive, passion is loud and imperious.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“She dreams of a future in which she, too, might be of both service and consequence to her country.” It”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“And in the end, I was right about Sally. Her fierce determination that her children should be free overcame all other instincts.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“We must endure criticism if we’re to honor the spirit of independence.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“I thought I was the only one who ever considered that trees might suffer melancholy, and the way their branches drooped under the weight of the ice suddenly made my own limbs heavier in sympathy. “But”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Alas, memories are made of more than inscriptions in stone. They’re made, too, of the words we leave behind. And my father left so many.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“I’d rather read than sew or keep house.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day never to return—more everything presses on—”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Because partisanship has made anything fair, which honor and propriety might once have kept quiet.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“The heart swellings convince me of the folly of those who dare to think that any new ties can weaken the first and best of nature.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“The more you learn, the more I love you. Lose no moment in improving your head, nor any opportunity of exercising your heart in benevolence. Your”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Love is a thing beyond control. Passion is a thing beyond reason. It can’t be denied.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“for all the things we never said aloud, there were even more we never put to paper.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“There is only one secret to anything,” Dolley asserted. “And that’s the power we all have in forming our own destinies.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“It was her habit to copy from the text, words that echoed the sentiments of her heart.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“useful work was the only defense against profound misery.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Whatever be the complexions of the enslaved, it does not, in my opinion, alter the complexion of the crime the enslaver commits. A crime much blacker than any African face.
Its a matter of great anxiety and concern to find this trade is sometimes carried on under the flag of liberty, our dear and noble stripes, to which virtue and glory have been constant standard-bearers.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Tom's lovemaking gave me a pleasure devoid of sentimentality, wrapping a thick gauze of self-delusion over still bleeding wounds. His tireless passion was an opiate so potent that I became intoxicated on the power I had to arouse. He knew, I think, that although he'd married me, he hadn't mastered me.
So he had to TRY again and again.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter