“ Go up along the eastern side of Lake Michigan, steer northeast when the land bends away at Point Betsie, and you come before long to Sleeping Bear Point–an incredible flat-topped sand dune rising five… Bruce Catton
“ And so that generation was deprived of the one element that is essential to the operation of a free society-the ability to assume, in the absence of good proof to the contrary, that men in public life… Bruce Catton
“ Early youth is a baffling time. The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day y… Bruce Catton
“ Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made. Bruce Catton
“ It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts d… Bruce Catton
“ The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you… Bruce Catton
“ What it really means is that the general must understand that he is not a free agent and cannot hope to become one. He has to work within the limitations imposed by the fact that he is working for a d… Bruce Catton
“ They were learning the reality of war, these youngsters, getting face to face with the sickening realization that men get killed uselessly because their generals are stupid, so that desperate encounte… Bruce Catton
“ The end of the war was like the beginning, with the army marching down the open road under the spring sky, seeing a far light on the horizon. Many lights had died in the windy dark but far down the ro… Bruce Catton
“ Out of Bull Run would come an effort so prodigious that simply to make it would change America forever. In the dust and smoke along the Warrenton Road an era had come to an end. Bruce Catton
“ Nobody was ready for it, and nobody could quite understand it now that it was happening. But somehow it was being determined that democracy henceforth, perhaps for some centuries to come, would operat… Bruce Catton
“ You were apt to go from one extreme to the other, in a truly pious environment; which is why ministers' sons in that day were more less expected to become loose livers when they grew up. Bruce Catton
“ There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect. It is slack-jawed, with l… Bruce Catton
“ The land was used to peace, and in the ordinary way its experience with military matters was confined to the militia muster — awkward men parading with heavy-footed informality in the public square, j… Bruce Catton
“ If the hardtack got moldy it was usually thrown away as inedible, but if it just got weevily it was issued anyway. Heating it at the fire would drive the weevils out; more impatient soldiers simply at… Bruce Catton
“ From first to last the Army of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing, proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always out; it did its… Bruce Catton
“ The barn by the Roulette house was jammed with wounded men. Screams, prayers, and curses made it a horrible place, with hundreds of anguished men packed together on the straw begging the surgeons to a… Bruce Catton
