Quotes from Candice Millard

Garfield, the New York Herald argued, "has recognized Republicans as members of a great party and not of mean factions. He has chosen men for office because of their fitness and ability, and not because they have stuck to the political fortunes of loved leaders.

I stubbed my toe going to the gallows

The more I study religion," he wrote, "the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself." Although a spy and an infidel and an agnostic

Well, I devoutly hope Churchill is safe," Atkins wrote in his dispatch that night, hardly believing that the young man who held so much promise could be so quickly lost. "But I half fear the gods love too much a man, only twenty-four years old, who... is that rare combination, the soldier, the reckless soldier even, and the bookman.

overhead with an eye on the horrid banquet." In the silence, with the full brunt of

Roosevelt, still wearing his heavy, hobnailed boots, watched as the snake's short fangs plunged into the tough leather and spilled its venom down the side of his boot. He had been spared an agonizing, certain death by a quarter-inch of leather.

As is true of most men who wield their power like a weapon, Conkling was widely feared, slavishly obeyed, and secretly despised.

How melancholy a thing is success," he would later write. "Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories 'are shadows, not substantial things.

Although each of these disparate groups trusted Garfield, it was not until they were plunged into a common grief and fear that they began to trust one another. Suddenly, a contemporary of Garfield's wrote, the nation was "united, as if by magic." Even Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy and a man whom Garfield had voted to indict as a war criminal, admitted that the assassination attempt had made "the whole Nation kin.

Aware that there was talk of making him a candidate in the presidential election of 1880, Garfield hoped to avoid the grasp of other men's ambitions and to be given a chance to wait for the future. However, he had already lived a long life for a young man and he knew that change came without invitation. Too often bringing loss and sorrow in its wake. This world, he had learned long before, does not seem to be the place to carry out ones' wishes.

Criticized for going too far and calling Conkling a murderer, the New York Tribune denied that it had ever used the word. That said, it wrote, "when a child, in its mad rage, kicks over a table, upsets a lamp, sets the house on fire, and burns people to death, nobody supposes that the child intended murder. Mr. Conkling has been acting like a child in a fit of passion.

It is one of the precious mysteries of sorrow that it finds solace in unselfish thought. - James A. Garfield

Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear like owls and bats before the light of day. JAMES A. GARFIELD

Science would soon exceed even Bell's expectations. Had Garfield had been shot just 15 years later, the bullet in his back would have been found by X-ray images and the wound treated with antiseptic surgery. He might have been back on his feet within weeks. Had he been able to receive modern medical care, he likely would have spent no more than a few nights in the hospital.

Even had Garfield simply been left alone, he almost certainly would have survived. Lodged as it was in the fatty tissue below and behind his pancreas, the bullet itself was no continuing danger to the president. Nature did all she could to restore him to health, a surgeon would write just a few years later. She caused a capsule of thick, strong, fibrous tissue to be formed around the bullet, completely walling it off from the rest of the body, and rendering it entirely harmless.

As Bliss declared victory, Bell struggled with a nagging sense of unease.

Despite the prayers and tears and earnest pleading, and pittiest protests for a hero's fall. Despite the hopeful signs, a heart's misleading. Death cometh after all.

I have never met a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat. - President James A. Garfield

Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised Garfield to do the same. "Sit crosslegged," he said, "and look wise.

The world is a great book, of which those who never leave home read but a page.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike. JAMES A. GARFIELD

The ordinary traveler, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package," Roosevelt sneered.

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old. JAMES A. GARFIELD

She (the First Lady, entering the room with her gravely wounded husband) would admit fear but not despair.