Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.

My judgment is that neither House of Congress, nor both combined, have any right to interfere in the count. It is for the Vice-President to do it all.... There should be no compromise of our Constitutional rights.

Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.

One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a soundcurrency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.

The filth and noise of the crowded streets soon destroy the elasticity of health which belongs to the country boy.

Both parties are injured by what is going on at Washington. Both are, therefore, more and more disposed to look for candidates outside of that atmosphere.