Famous quotes containing the words eastern, theater, american, civil, war, grant and/or lee:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)
“Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Therefore I summon age
To grant youth’s heritage,
Life’s struggle having so far reached its term:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“This is no Sir Galahad who lives from afar. This is a two- legged boa constrictor.”
—John Lee Mahin (1902–1984)