I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.

I pray that on this day [Christmas] when only peace and good-will are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace.

Act with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future.

My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.

General Longstreet,when once in a fight, was a most brilliant soldier; but he was the hardest man to move I had in my army.