“Dominance can be a tempration to division. “There are so many of us, we can afford to fight amongst ourselves.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln learned to summon the passions, but he never addressed his audience as sweethearts.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln loved other people’s jokes as much as his own.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln began to emerge from his funk by helping a coworker who looked up to him out of a funk of his own.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Since we never get everything we want or need from our families, we look for sufficiency in surrogates.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“She noticed, as an exceptional woman would, that her stepson was exceptional.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln had a stubborn concern for first principles.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Most principles are limp until they are tested.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“It was as simple as walking and as hard as walking on with so far gone and so far yet to go.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“As with almost every long oration, there were loose ends.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Any man’s life can be seen as a series of engagements with his fathers, Including the surrogates provided by life and literature.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln bore down or anything he handled, mastering both the details and the principles.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“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.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“She became at once more intimate and more exalted.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“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.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln told a family friend that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“To use the past, he had to save it from aspects of itself.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“A storyteller, a displaced poet, will absorb reading differently.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Young, healthy communities can afford to roll the dice.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“The towering genius is not apolitical.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.”
— Richard Brookhiser
“Lincoln was a master of small group theatrics.”
— Richard Brookhiser