Quotes from Candice Millard

The only public position Arthur had held before becoming vice president of the United States was as collector of the New York Customs House, a job that Conkling had secured for him and which paid more than $50,000 a year—as much as the president's salary, and five times as much as the vice president's. Even then, he had been forced out of office amid widespread allegations of corruption.

Not only did many American doctors not believe in germs, they took pride in the particular brand of filth that defined their profession. They spoke fondly of the "good old surgical stink" that pervaded their hospitals and operating rooms, and they resisted making too many concessions even to basic hygiene.

To a young man who has in himself the magnificent possibilities of life, it is not fitting that he should be permanently commanded. He should be a commander. JAMES A. GARFIELD

In the darkest days of the Civil War, he had wondered if the war itself was God's punishment for the horrors of slavery. "For what else are we so fearfully scourged and defeated?" he had asked.

Of course I deprecate war," he wrote, "but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.

Chance is unceasingly at work in our lives," Churchill would write years later, thinking back on Grenfell and the fate that might have been his, "but we cannot always see its workings sharply and clearly defined.

General Robert Baden-Powell, later founder of the Boy Scouts, drastically cut African rations in an attempt to spare not just his own men but any white civilians trapped in the town with them. His plan was to starve the native population until they were forced to break out of the besieged city in search of food, thus reducing the number of mouths to feed.

This world," he had learned long before, "does not seem to be the place to carry out one's wishes.

Let us weep," Rondon would tell them, "for I loved this man who has perished for my sake. But I command you to do as he did. Never shoot." Rondon believed that his mission in protecting and pacifying the Indians was larger than his own life, larger than any of their lives. He would rather die than surrender his ideals, and he obliged his men to follow suit.

Launching and landing the boats, often chest-deep in water amid the heavy underbrush that lined the riverbank, the men were constantly vulnerable to the predatory fish, waterborne snakes, and other creatures they were disturbing. Even

convex side of the train," he wrote, "when both the

Even the editor of the highly respected Medical Record found more to fear than to admire in Lister's theory. "Judging the future by the past," he wrote, "we are likely to be as much ridiculed in the next century for our blind belief in the power of unseen germs, as our forefathers were for their faith in the influence of spirits, of certain planets and the like, inducing certain maladies.

If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes. I remember on one such occasion when the French Ambassador, [Jules] Jusserand . . . was along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, somebody said, 'Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven't taken off your gloves,' to which he promptly responded, 'I think I will leave them on; we might meet ladies!

every Rebel guerilla and jayhawker, every man who ran to Canada to avoid the draft, every bounty-jumper, every deserter, every cowardly sneak that ran from danger and disgraced his flag,… every villain, of whatever name or crime, who loves power more than justice, slavery more than freedom, is a Democrat.

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured." As

He had no idea where he was, but, he thought with a small twinge of consolation, neither did anyone else.

Roosevelt had witnessed this low threshold for discomfort in some of his closest friends, and he believed that it showed a shallowness of character that he was determined never to see in his own children.

Each time he faced personal tragedy or weakness, he found his strength not in the sympathy of others, but in the harsh ordeal of unfamiliar new challenges and lonely adventure.

I so much despise a man who blows his own horn, that I go to the other extreme.

We do not set greed against greed or hatred against hatred," he thundered. "Our creed is one that bids us to be just to all, to feel sympathy for all, and to strive for an understanding of the needs of all. Our purpose is to smite down wrong.

I repeat my motto: poco spero, nulla chiedo." Little I hope, nothing I ask.

The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults," Pamela would explain years later to Edward Marsh, Churchill's private secretary, "and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.

Like others at the time, Burton and Speke were unapologetic in their racism, with all of its attendant arrogance and ignorance, but they were sickened by the slave trade, which, Burton wrote, "had made a howling desert of the land," and took great pride in their country's efforts to end it.

Most of his equipment was useless, or as it has been appropriately termed "doodle-dabs",' Miller wrote ... The rations were an even larger, and more critical, problem ... 'We discovered here whole cases of olive oil, cases of mustard, malted milk, stuffed olives, prunes, applesauce, etc etc. Even Rhine wine.