Best 30 quotes of Richard Brookhiser on MyQuotes

Aaron Burr was like a new refrigerator. He was bright, cold and empty.

Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it -- no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are their best recruiters.

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

Only the stupefying ignorance of young women prevents them from comprehending the stupefying emptiness of the men who cluster round them.

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.

Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine?

Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries.

The Dutch practice euthanasia so briskly that they will kill themselves even before the Islamists get around to it.

The young women who attract so much attention never change: They are all stupid. They have at best only the crudest notions of their own power, and never calculate motives or consequences. Giving a young woman a young woman's body makes as much sense as giving ten teenagers Lamborghinis and telling them to drive in figure 8s around a parking lot.

[Washington had won] a war for independence and then gone home. [He embodied] the legend of the Roman who returned to his plow after saving his country.

Any man's life can be seen as a series of engagements with his fathers, Including the surrogates provided by life and literature.

A storyteller, a displaced poet, will absorb reading differently.

As with almost every long oration, there were loose ends.

Depression can seem absurdly self aggrandizing to those who do not experience it, But that does not make it any less painful to those who do.

Dominance can be a tempration to division. "There are so many of us, we can afford to fight amongst ourselves.

God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces.

Good politicians know when to move on, sooner or later.

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.

It was as simple as walking and as hard as walking on with so far gone and so far yet to go.

Literature offered a safe circumscribed outlet for sadness.

Most principles are limp until they are tested.

One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

She became at once more intimate and more exalted.

She noticed, as an exceptional woman would, that her stepson was exceptional.

Since we never get everything we want or need from our families, we look for sufficiency in surrogates.

The beaten path can be a busy and distracting place.

Washington offered a republican substitute for the dignity of royalty.

Young, healthy communities can afford to roll the dice.