As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal. We now practically read it, ‘all men are created equal, except negroes. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, ‘all men a...
Did you know that Lincoln liked popcorn, and oysters, and a good strong cup of coffee?
The distinction is essential. Fault implies a failure or weakness for which a person should be held to account, if not outright blamed. Misfortune is an unhappy circumstance, something bad that has ha...
A creeping fear of madness often accompanies depression. Sufferers wonder if their black moods will ever lift, or if their feelings of alienation from the healthy world will deepen and widen. These fe...
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.
Her brother-in-law Ninian Edwards said bluntly, She could make a bishop forget his prayers.
Sickness of hope deferred,
His reason and his logic, said his friend James Matheny, swallowed up all his being.
High-level creative exchange depends on both hierarchical and fluid power relationships.
Don’t you find, he said, judging from his picture, that his eyes are full of tears and that his lips are sad with a secret sorrow?
In a modern dictionary, the noun melancholy has two definitions. First, it means thoughtful or gentle sadness.
An argument can be made—a rigorous, persuasive argument—that every good new thing results from a teeming complexity.
Put plainly, Lincoln was a politician, building a public life on points that could be sustained by popular opinion—or, in extreme cases, sustained despite popular opinion. Doing good depended on winni...
Of all the paradoxes of Lincoln’s life, none is more powerful than the fact that the man who would come to be known throughout the world—from American schoolrooms to the tribal councils of the Caucasu...
That solitude promotes insight as well as change, Storr continues, has been recognized by the great religious leaders—including the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed—who have usually retreated from the worl...
He said gloomily, despairing, sadly: ‘How hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one’s country no better than if one had never lived for it.
As president, he explained why he would pardon soldiers who deserted for cowardice: It would frighten the poor devils to death to shoot them.
One of the basic ideas of the evangelical movement in the early nineteenth century was that people could help themselves. Rather than wonder and fear the fate God decreed for them, they could actively...
Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. Late
In the early nineteenth century, a new culture—a new idea about what to hope for—emerged for many Americans, centered around the independent self, under nation and God.
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