“Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.”
“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”
It is difficult to cull from Theodore Roosevelt’s vast store of brilliant quotes. I was barely aware of him outside of Looney Toons caricatures until I read James Chace’s 1912, about the 1912 election between Woodrow Wilson, Eugene Debs, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. It was clear from the book who the author’s favorite was.
Later I read Candice Millard’s River of Doubt, about TR’s ‘vacation’ float up an undiscovered tributary of the Amazon river. When I was telling my pa-in-law about these, he told me that in his grandfather’s eyes, Theodore Roosevelt ranked right behind Jesus. He later gave me Christmas gift of Edmund Morris’s Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which chronicles TR’s life from birth to the end of the vice presidency.
All three books were excellent. However, no matter how cynical you think you might be regarding American politics, you will find you probably aren’t jaded enough.
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