The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantling... and boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf c...alls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No one knows anybody's name because nobody has a name. You're just your state. I got to where somebody would say "Virginia," and I...'d answer. I was just "Virginia." I wasn't me any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That we can come here today and in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands of the survivors of the gallant army of Norther...n Virginia and their descendants, establish such an enduring monument by their hospitable welcome and acclaim, is conclusive proof of the uniting of the sections, and a universal confession that all that was done was well done, that the battle had to be fought, that the sections had to be tried, but that in the end, the result has inured to the common benefit of all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet, The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,... Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves, Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales, Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting currents that, thr...ough them, had come into final collision. Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in American life. Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition.... Grant, the son of a tanner on the Western frontier, was everything Lee was not. He had come up the hard way and embodied nothing in particular except the eternal toughness and sinewy fiber of the men who grew up beyond the mountains. He was one of a body of men who owed reverence and obeisance to no one, who were self-reliant to a fault, who cared hardly anything for the past but who had a sharp eye for the future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Little Trotty Wagtail, he waddled in the mud, And left his little footmarks, trample where he would.... He waddled in the water-pudge, and waggle went his tail, And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »