"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."--L.P. Hartley
"There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past."--G.K. Chesterton
“One day he put aside his pencil and said there was nothing more to do.”--Mark Twain
Mark Twain did not write Actual President Grant's 'Memoirs'. Like Actual President Reagan, his manuscripts still exist in his own handwriting.
Twain did edit the work, but his most important role was to arrive just in the nick of time. He convinced Grant not to sign an inferior publishing contract and secured a lucrative deal that provided for Grant's family. .......
Mark Twain on Ulysses S. Grant -(irishmanspeaks.com)
"He was a very great man and superlatively good."—Mark Twain: A Biography
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"I think the most interesting personality I ever encountered was General Grant. How and where he was so much larger than other men I had ever met I cannot describe. It was the same sort of feeling, I suppose that made my friend, Thomas Starr King, whilst listening to a celebrated preacher, turn to me and exclaim, “Whereabouts in that figure does that imperial power reside.” You had that feeling with Grant exactly."—Mark Twain Interview: Sydney Morning Herald, 1895
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"[W]hen we think of General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar vanishes; we only remember that this is the simple soldier, who, all untaught of the silken phrase-makers, linked words together with an art surpassing the art of the schools, and put into them a something which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching hosts."—Mark Twain Notebook, 1886
...so many of Grant’s former West Point friends became Confederate enemies and the wonderful gesture of Grant’s wife Julia who requested two of those Confederate generals to be pall bearers.".......
Mark Twain quotations - Ulysses Grant (twainquotes.com)
"I did not admire him so much for winning the war as for ending the war."- quoted in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, Fisher
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Illustration by Frederick Gruger from SUNDAY MAGAZINE, Dec. 1, 1907.
Ulysses Grant, Samuel Clemens and Susy Clemens |
How Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain Rescued Each Other’s Fortunes - OZY | A Modern Media Company
"At the dinner in Grant’s honor, Twain was the final speaker in a series of interminable after-dinner toasts that had extended well past midnight, and the humorist decided to use his formidable wit to try to break up the usually stone-countenanced general. At one point, in the 19th century version of a Comedy Central roast, Twain irreverently conjured the image of a baby Grant, a headstrong infant determined to suck his own toes. “And if the child is but a prophecy of the man,” he injected, “there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.”
It did the trick. “I fetched him! I broke him up, utterly!” Twain later informed his wife. “I shook him up like dynamite,” he told a good friend. “He sat there fifteen minutes & laughed and cried like the mortalest of mortals.”’
Ulysses S. Grant Quotes (Author of Personal Memoirs) (goodreads.com):
“No political party can or ought to exist when one of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the right to worship God “according to the dictate of one’s own conscience,” or according to the creed of any religious denomination whatever.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes
“I am not aware of ever having used a profane expletive in my life; but I would have the charity to excuse those who may have done so, if they were in charge of a train of Mexican pack mules at the time. CHAPTER VIII.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes
“It is possible that the question of a conflict between races may come up in the future, as did that between freedom and slavery before. The condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of anxiety, to say the least. But he was brought to our shores by compulsion, and he now should be considered as having as good a right to remain here as any other class of our citizens.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, Includes Both Volumes
“During the day I was passing along the line from wing to wing continuously. About the centre stood a house which proved to be occupied by an old lady and her daughter. She showed such unmistakable signs of being strongly Union that I stopped. She said she had not seen a Union flag for so long a time that it did her heart good to look upon it again. She said her husband and son, being Union men, had had to leave early in the war, and were now somewhere in the Union army, if alive. She was without food or nearly so, so I ordered rations issued to her, and promised to find out if I could where the husband and son were.”― Ulysses S. Grant
“I believe . . . that if our country ever comes into trial again, young men will spring up equal to the occasion, and if one fails, there will be another to take his place.”― Ulysses S. Grant
“While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.”
― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes
“When the men were all back in their places in line, the command to advance was given. As I looked down that long line of about three thousand armed men, advancing towards a larger force also armed, I thought what a fearful responsibility General Taylor must feel, commanding such a host and so far away from friends. The Mexicans immediately opened fire upon us, first with artillery and then with infantry. At first their shots did not reach us, and the advance was continued. As we got nearer, the cannon balls commenced going through the ranks. They hurt no one, however, during this advance, because they would strike the ground long before they reached our line, and ricochetted through the tall grass so slowly that the men would see them and open ranks and let them pass.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
“The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times. The 4th infantry went into camp at Salubrity in the month of May, 1844, with instructions, as I have said, to await further orders.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes
“I believe it has never been my misfortune to be placed where I lost my presence of mind--unless indeed it has been where thrown in strange company, particularly of ladies.”― Ulysses S. Grant
“The darkest day of my life was the day I heard of Lincoln's assassination. I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and staring up in the gutters...”― Ulysses S. Grant
“I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought. The justice of the cause which in the end prevailed, will, I doubt not, come to be acknowledged by every citizen of the land, in time. For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.”― Ulysses S. Grant, The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
“I know only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' the other isn't.”― Ulysses S. Grant
“The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude machinery, propelled by water power, had been invested sails to propel ships upon the waters and been set to catch the passing breeze – but the application of steam to propel vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably that day have been attribute to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable.”― Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”― Ulysses S. Grant
“I have never advocated war except as means of peace, so seek peace, but prepare for war. Because war... War never changes. War is like winter and winter is coming.”― Ulysses S Grant
“Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now: that is, we have a government, and laws, and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.”― Ulysses S. Grant
Then, as now, sir, then as now.
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