Courting Mr. Lincoln Quotes

“Men don’t always know what they need. That’s why God made women.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“Joshua said nothing, for his mind was even now limning the vacancy. Lincoln would no more be seated on the far side of the dining table. He would no more ride his horse into town or let his huge hands rove through the library of stroll past the hemp house or listen to Eliza gabble or applaud Mary's nocturnes or argue some abstruse point of law with James or scratch behind Growler's ears as the dog lay stretched around his feet. From henceforth, there would be only space where Lincoln used to be.
And in Joshua's mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything around him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“I’m the one who feeds the lions their raw meat.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—
And angels know the rest. I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness. —Emily Dickinson”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“Courting Mr. Lincoln is intimate, warm and, above all, compassionate. Bayard is concerned with the possibilities of the human heart, and he presents an enigmatic Lincoln seen—and loved—from two other points of a romantic triangle . . . The greatest triumph of Courting Mr. Lincoln is how effectively Bayard creates suspense, even when we know how the story ends. Love is love is love, after all, and he invests us deeply in the moving journey of three extraordinary people.” —Newsday”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“How had they come to this, she wondered? How had they ever believed themselves known to each other? How could anyone be known—anyone at all—here on God’s green earth?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“Small wonder, then, that Mary imbibed politics from earliest infancy. If she had come up in a more modern era, she might well have staked her own claim to office, but in those pre-suffrage days, her only outlet was to find a promising candidate to marry. And herein another mystery: why did she settle on Abraham Lincoln?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“Of all the mysteries that enveloped the man, perhaps the most profound was his choice of life mate. It certainly puzzled contemporaries like Herndon, who referred to Mary Todd Lincoln variously as a “she wolf,” a “tigress,” and “the female wild cat of the age.” Even scholars more sympathetically inclined to her have wondered what drew Lincoln to such a complicated creature. What, for that matter, drew her to him? How did two such disparate people find each other and embark on this fraught and troubled and, at the same time, loving and enduring alliance?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“According to the Library of Congress catalog, 9,100 books have been published on the subject of Abraham Lincoln. Or if you like: on at least 9,100 occasions, some poor fool has tried to get the measure of him. Which raises the question of whether, at this advanced date, any other book or any other measuring is required. And if I venture to say “yes”—even an emphatic “yes”—it’s not so much because of Lincoln’s undeniable historical importance. It’s because of Lincoln himself and his refusal to be pinned down.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“According to the Library of Congress catalog, 9,100 books have been published on the subject of Abraham Lincoln. Or if you like: on at least 9,100 occasions, some poor fool has tried to get the measure of him.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“once told you we were the two brokenest birds I knew,” he said. “What I didn’t see was how well our pieces might still fit together for all that. At least I think they might. I think I should like to try.” He took one of her hands and brought it to his chest. “Mary Todd,” he said, “would you do me the great honor of being my wife?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“How puppyish they looked—and how elderly Mary felt in the act of looking upon them. At twenty-four, she had just gotten in under Matilda’s age bar. Before too much longer (and there were days she could contemplate this dispassionately), she would graduate to the spinsterhood that life had apparently marked out for her. With flat appraising eyes, she peeled off a glove and stared down at her hand. Imagined each square of that fair and plumped skin blotching and fissuring with age.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“From henceforth, there would be only the space where Lincoln used to be. And in Joshua’s mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything round him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“On a subject such as this,” answered Lincoln, “I should prefer not to be considered reasonable.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“If we are to speak of uncompensated labor,” returned James, “then my brother and I were forced to spend nearly half of every year in the hemp fields. Father gave us no preference over the Negroes. We worked side by side with them. Swam and wrestled with them, did everything they did.” “And then you came back,” said Lincoln, “to this charming house, with its fifteen rooms. And consoled yourself the whole time that your labor would end. And, every Fourth of July, you raised a glass to liberty—as did I, good republican. Only whose liberty were we toasting? And who, outside of our own nation, would call it by that name?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“They are healthy,” James began, making a tabulation on his fingers. “They are well fed. They are treated fairly. They are awarded bonuses for exceeding their quotas. You won’t find that in Louisiana.” “Very well,” said Lincoln. “Tell me what happens when they don’t reach their quotas. Or show themselves in the streets after sundown. What happens when the price of hemp goes down and inventory needs to be sold?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“They are healthy,” James began, making a tabulation on his fingers. “They are well fed. They are treated fairly. They are awarded bonuses for exceeding their quotas. You won’t find that in Louisiana.” “Very well,” said Lincoln. “Tell me what happens when they don’t reach their quotas. Or show themselves in the streets after sundown. What happens when the price of hemp goes down and inventory needs to be”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“A man could slough off the taint of a broken engagement; a woman, never. She must carry it through life, like a smallpox scar.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“atlas. “Oh, how I wish you could see your fate as I do. The doom toward which you are both rushing. Mark my words, you will become one of those couples—those outlandishly mismatched couples—that nobody can make heads or tails of. The world will look at you. . . . It will look at you both, and it will say, ‘How did that happen? How on God’s green earth did they come together?”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“I’m sure many have spoken of her.” Lincoln reached for his pen, dipped it in the inkwell. “She is Elizabeth Edwards’ sister.” “For which she has my sympathies.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“Many a woman has been won without ever being wooed.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“believe, it is the height of love to—to release a loved one.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“hope you will allow me to speak as plainly as I can.” This was the difference, he thought, between the South and the North. A Southern woman would never ask permission.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“For what purpose?” “So they don’t devour the other speakers.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“A lady is in the newspaper but three times in her life. When she is born—” “When she marries and when she dies,”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“will say this. He gets less ugly with time.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“friend of mine says you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“was nine when she passed. The last thing she told us was Be good to one another.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln