Quotes from Jennifer Chiaverini

The Moses of her people had fallen in the hour of his triumph. His tragic death was all the more heartbreaking because he had not lived to enjoy the peace he had toiled so long to achieve.

Agnes had fallen in love with appliqué, thanks to her wise, patient teacher, and she made more complex and intricate quilts in the years that had followed, but the Christmas Cactus quilt would always be precious to her, not only because she had discovered a new artistic path by mastering appliqué, but also because Edna's generosity of spirit inspired her to live her own life free of judgment and bitterness.

brothers and I finished digging the grave he had already begun, and we buried him in the company of Mr. Orrick's wife and two good German women, neighbors

I just don't know which is worse, to say nothing or to say too much.

Never in her life had Elizabeth known a more peculiarly constituted woman.

It may without exaggeration be said today that we are having something of an excitement.' [New York Times Baltimore correspondent, reporting on Maryland's declaration of a state of emergency as Confederate troops threatened Baltimore and Washington, D.C.]

of her husband's cabinet, who had their own ideas for the president's social calendar. The worst conflict, and the most upsetting for Mrs. Lincoln, was with John George Nicolay, the president's personal secretary, who was charged with the responsibility of arranging state dinners. Single-minded in her resolve

The House and Senate also passed a joint

But are we not both made for this very thing? If you pluck an apple from a tree, is the tree ruined? If you use a new pen, is it ruined, or is it finally fulfilling the purpose for which it was created?

Her greatest legacy could not be measured in garments or in words, but in the wisdom she had imparted, in the lives made better because she had touched them.

Christmas Sonatina by Carl Reinecke

Pluribus Unum. In my view that does not refer only to states, but also to our varied people. Whatever brought these strangers together in this place—chance, fate, or divine intervention—their lives will be forever transformed, forever bound together even if only by the slenderest of threads, because they shared stories.

Life and Letters (New York: Knopf, 1972); and John E. Washington, They Knew Lincoln (New York: Dutton, 1942). Of course, no work was more important than Elizabeth Keckley's own memoir, Behind the Scenes (New York, G. W. Carleton & Company

I understood that at eight years of age, but I had forgotten it by eighteen.

Hope is never false. One's hopes may not be fulfilled, but that does not mean it was wrong to hope.

For Sylvia's greatest bequest was the reminder that true friends are the most precious gift, and that even in the darkest of times love illuminates the way home.

Illinois Seventh District to the United States Congress. The Lincolns

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Knowledge

Lincoln turned away from her husband with a look of offended dignity, but before

And Richmond is my home. I can't leave. But it will be so hard for colored folks in the South when the war is done. Martha managed a smile. It's always been hard, and we've always gotten by.

The Todd sisters all had survived tragedy. They all had endured loss—parents, husbands, children, whole nations and noble causes, all had fallen away, lost to time. If they could not rise above their old resentments to help a sister in need, would it not be said that they had learned nothing from their own suffering?

And as Miss Austen wrote, 'It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

They who had already crossed the river into the land of freedom were obliged to turn and offer a hand to those who were taking their first tentative steps upon the shore, and Elizabeth resolved to do exactly that.

If a white child appeared dull, he and he alone was thought to suffer from a lack of intelligence or a deficient education, but if a colored boy appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent.