The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas treewill bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

A senator is like a begonia - showy but useless.

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.