Quotes from Gore Vidal

The next week both small pox and the bloody flux began to go through the camp. General Washington maintained that the flux came from drinking new cider. But the cider-drinking continued, and so for that matter did the flux, which is a terrible death, the bowels emptying out one's life in bloody spasms. I

History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

As we left the bar, we saw two men fighting at the wooden pump. One was short and stocky: he was pummelling a tall gangling creature with loose flapping arms ... Edwin Forrest was giving a much deserved beating to William de la Touche Clancey, the Tory sodomite.

with Lincoln and speak openly of the dangers of a presidency that

None of this is quite true but Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular.

We are in danger of government by professional office-holders Ã¢â'¬Â¦

Safe at the opposite corner, Clancey was himself again — coolly disdainful despite dirt-smeared face, torn shirt ... Clancey's voice is like that of a furious goose, all honks and hisses.

The Bowery b'hoys were delighted ... to observe a pair of their favorites in league against their natural enemy, for Clancey detests our democracy, finds even the Whigs radical, the Adams family vulgar, Daniel Webster a sans-culotte . He fills the pages of his magazine America with libellous comments on all things American. Despite a rich wife and five children, he is a compulsive sodomite, forever preying on country boys new to the city.

and so his secretary of state, Acheson, was told to wait until February 1949, after the election, to present to Congress our changeover from a Western Hemisphere republic to an imperial European polity, symmetrically balanced by our Asian empire, centered on occupied Japan and, in due course, its tigerish pendant, the ASEAN alliance.

On March 12, 1947, Truman addressed Congress to proclaim what would be known as the Truman Doctrine, in which he targeted our ally of two years earlier as the enemy. The subject at hand was a civil war in Greece, supposedly directed by the Soviet. We could not tolerate this as, suddenly, "the policy of the United States [is] to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure." Thus

Dr. Bogart was about to tell me more when William de la Touche Clancey sat down next to me with an insolent crash (do I resemble a country youth because I am small?)

I plainly lacked Wilkinson's doggedness in pursuing those commanders who might help me up in the world.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you.

Scott paused. Lincoln slowly straightened up. "Well, I guess we'd better persuade Virginia and Maryland to stay in the Union a while longer." Seward gave an audible sigh of relief. This was the Lincoln that he had been inventing for himself ever since the election: the cautious vacillator—a Western Jesuit, in fact.

As we rounded a small pavilion, we nearly stepped into a pair of figures — who leapt apart. One was William de la Touche Clancey. The other was a well-made boy of perhaps sixteen, carefully got up to resemble a swell; only the red blunt hands betrayed the fact that he was a workie. So! Clancey gave his accusing goose-like hiss. The boy looked embarrassed, as well he should. There are some things that the poor ought not to do even for money.

Wo immer ein Thron ist, findet man in reicher Auswahl jede Torheit und jede Bosheit, deren der Mensch fähig ist, poliert mit guten Manieren und vergoldet mit Heuchelei.

Worlds are there to be conquered." I was light but I meant what I said. We were living at a time when for the adventurous and imaginative man anything was possible. Bonaparte had inspired, no doubt in a bad way, an entire generation.

She was intelligent but not clever; drawn

He had the reputation for being stupid, and I see no reason for altering this common judgment.

no similes. Nothing is like anything else. Things are themselves entirely and do not need interpretation, only a minimal respect for their precise integrity.

Nothing is like anything else. Things are themselves entirely and do not need interpretation, only a minimal respect for their precise integrity.

agent Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, had come into his splendid own, fingering better actors.

At one point, Ferrell notes that Truman actually gave thought to the sufferings of women and children should we go nuclear in Korea. As for Truman's original decision to use two atomic bombs on Japan, most now agree that a single demonstration would have been quite enough to cause a Japanese surrender while making an attractive crater lake out of what had been Mount Fujiyama's peak.

For two nights running he had slept in his clothes on the floor of my bedroom at the Golden Eagle; nor had I tried to move him. I knew from experience that when Luther Martin decided to sleep on the floor (or in a cupboard—he was unnaturally partial to cupboards), it was pointless to protest.