Richard Brookhiser Quotes

#1. He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

Richard Brookhiser

#2. Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine?

Richard Brookhiser

#3. Lincoln was a master of small group theatrics.

Richard Brookhiser

#4. To use the past, he had to save it from aspects of itself.

Richard Brookhiser

#5. Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

Richard Brookhiser

#6. Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries.

Richard Brookhiser

#7. Most principles are limp until they are tested.

Richard Brookhiser

#8. Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.

Richard Brookhiser

#9. 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

#10. It was as simple as walking and as hard as walking on with so far gone and so far yet to go.

Richard Brookhiser

#11. Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.

Richard Brookhiser

#12. Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it
no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are their best recruiters.

Richard Brookhiser

#13. The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.

Richard Brookhiser

#14. One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

Richard Brookhiser

#15. Lincoln learned to summon the passions, but he never addressed his audience as sweethearts.

Richard Brookhiser

#16. She noticed, as an exceptional woman would, that her stepson was exceptional.

Richard Brookhiser

#17. As with almost every long oration, there were loose ends.

Richard Brookhiser

#18. Washington offered a republican substitute for the dignity of royalty.

Richard Brookhiser

#19. The towering genius is not apolitical.

Richard Brookhiser

#20. Madison lived in his head and public speaking did not come naturally to him.

Richard Brookhiser

#21. [Washington had won] a war for independence and then gone home. [He embodied] the legend of the Roman who returned to his plow after saving his country.

Richard Brookhiser

#22. Lincoln loved other people's jokes as much as his own.

Richard Brookhiser

#23. Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.

Richard Brookhiser

#24. Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.

Richard Brookhiser

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. Depression manifests itself in a lack of will.

Richard Brookhiser

#28. A storyteller, a displaced poet, will absorb reading differently.

Richard Brookhiser

#29. Young, healthy communities can afford to roll the dice.

Richard Brookhiser

#30. Only the stupefying ignorance of young women prevents them from comprehending the stupefying emptiness of the men who cluster round them.

Richard Brookhiser

#31. Aaron Burr was like a new refrigerator. He was bright, cold and empty.

Richard Brookhiser

#32. 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

#33. Lincoln had a stubborn concern for first principles.

Richard Brookhiser

#34. notice these inconsistencies: Christian and anti-Christian polemicists

Richard Brookhiser

#35. Dominance can be a tempration to division. "There are so many of us, we can afford to fight amongst ourselves.

Richard Brookhiser

#36. She became at once more intimate and more exalted.

Richard Brookhiser

#37. Good politicians know when to move on, sooner or later.

Richard Brookhiser

#38. One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

Richard Brookhiser

#39. Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.

Richard Brookhiser

#40. Lincoln bore down or anything he handled, mastering both the details and the principles.

Richard Brookhiser

#41. If enlightened public opinion was a bulwark of freedom, then leaders must labor ceaselessly to enlighten or manipulate it.

Richard Brookhiser

#42. 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

#43. The beaten path can be a busy and distracting place.

Richard Brookhiser

#44. Inspiring words are potent, and sometimes dangerous, things. They can inspire idiots and devils as well as great man.

Richard Brookhiser

#45. Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.

Richard Brookhiser

#46. Since we never get everything we want or need from our families, we look for sufficiency in surrogates.

Richard Brookhiser

#47. Lincoln told a family friend that his father taught him to work, but never learned him to love it.

Richard Brookhiser