How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence--I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.

I would strenuously urge a single term of six years.

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.

I would honor the man who give to his country a good newspaper.

There is a great deal of strength in Garfield's life and struggles as a self-made man.... From poverty and obscurity, by labor at all avocations, he became a great scholar, a statesman, a major general, a Senator, a Presidential candidate.... The truth is, no man ever started so low that accomplished so much in all our history. Not Franklin or Lincoln even.

Every expert was once a beginner.

These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery - in fact, its only enemy.