The North and South Trilogy Quotes

“Yet how strong was friendship? Could it banish disagreement over a fundamental issue of human liberty—as if the issue and the disagreement didn’t exist?”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“To work until the body aches is the best medicine for the loneliness that seems to be one of God’s great blights on existence.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“east-side district of fiercely steep streets and huge old houses, many decaying, the air smelled of the river, and the German breweries and slaughterhouses. Detraining at the depot, Dills had nearly choked on the odor of hogs and more hogs. A European traveler had called Cincinnati “a monster piggery,” and nicknamed it Porkopolis. In the Tribune, old Greeley hailed it as “the queen city of the West.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“buffalo soldiers as the Plains Indians called them, reminded of the buffalo’s coat by the woolly hair of the black men. The troopers tended to like the term buffalo soldier, because the buffalo was revered.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“I believe in the exact words of Mr. Jefferson’s declaration that all men are created equal, if not in mind and body and circumstance, then most assuredly in opportunity.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“In this life, we are called to use our talents responsibly.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Charles mounted, and scratched the inside of his left leg. His case of camp itch was worsening. At least the rash wasn’t as bad as the clap that several scouts had caught from camp followers who dignified themselves with the title laundress.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“knowledge was a stronger defense against the world’s wickedness than was ignorance.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“In Washington? It’s a morass of chicanery, stupidity, witless paper shuffling—but self-preservation has been raised to a high art. A few faces may change, nothing more.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Leathery incense swirled from shelves without so much as an inch of empty space. Jane felt herself to be in a cathedral. She continued to stand silently, like a petitioner. Then she tilted her head back and raised her gaze to the books, all the books, while a radiance broke over her face.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“About twenty-two millions lived in the North. There, too, you found most of the old Union’s industrial plants, rail trackage, telegraphic lines, mineral and monetary wealth. The eleven states of the Confederacy had a population of something like nine million; a third of those, slaves, would never be of use to the war effort except in menial ways.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“In the North, free workers were speeding into a prosperous future to the hum of machines, not dragging a load of rusty methods and ideologies as heavy as wrist cuffs and leg manacles, and fully as hampering.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Slavery brings the judgment of heaven upon a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this: GEORGE MASON OF VIRGINIA 1787”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Some influential planters in this state are talking of pulling away from the Davis government and petitioning Great Britain to make South Carolina a protectorate.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“just one thing is necessary for the triumph of wicked men, and that’s for good men to do nothing.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“In the Army’s officer corps, most of the outstanding men hailed from the South.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“beauty of a simpler, more substantial sort, compounded in part of the shy gentleness of her gaze and the kindness of her smile.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“doughface—a Yankee with sympathy for the South.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“how strong was friendship? Could it banish disagreement over a fundamental issue of human liberty—as if the issue and the disagreement didn’t exist?”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“significant difference between the economic systems of the North and South was not in industry versus agriculture but in motivation. The free Yankee worked to better himself. The Southern slave worked to keep from being punished. That difference was slowly rotting the South from the inside.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“To many Southerners, the word Ohio meant just one thing—the state containing Oberlin College, where white and black students defied convention by studying together as equals.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“His God, growing more familiar and companionable by the hour, was a Deity who favored the brave man who didn’t shrink from the hard action.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Is it because they all testify that we are never guaranteed a happy life, only life itself? …”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Trouble was, when you refused to learn, the result was what surrounded the rumbling wagon: soured earth; abandoned homes; imperiled lives. Ruin.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“Every colored person in this country is enslaved to the fears of whites and to the way those fears influence white behavior.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“to err is human, to forgive, divine.” “You like Shakespeare, do you?”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“His younger brother looked to him for advice—wisdom—never realizing that older people were almost as uncertain of everything as Billy was, if not more.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“No, sir. But even if they are, I’m inclined to go with them.” “For God’s sake, man—why?” The foreman peered at Cooper as if he were callow, not very bright. “South Carolina is my home. Those men speak up for it. No one else does, Mr. Main.”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“you didn’t”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell

“emancipation”
― John Jakes, The North and South Trilogy: North and South / Love and War / Heaven and Hell