Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker Quotes
"I cannot go down. How could I possibly? I have absolutely nothing to wear."
"If you do not charge too much, I shall be able to give you all my work."
"I can’t afford to pay big prices, and so I frankly tell you so in the beginning."
"Well, if you will work cheap, you shall have plenty to do."
"I have not time to talk to you now, but would like to have you call at the White House."
"Mrs. Lincoln, I shall be glad to have you call on me at anytime."
"Either the need for soldiers is very small or the foolishness of Mr. Lincoln’s recruiters is very great."
"I am willing to give this noble cause the three months they ask, and my life if necessary."
"Your observations make me the envy of my classmates."
"I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well."
"You may well ask how this can be, since colored men are not welcome in the ranks of the Union Army."
"If the fighting goes on longer than they expect, maybe they’ll let colored men enlist later."
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies."
"What a marvelous idea. I hope it's a complete success."
"Heaven knows we have suffering colored folks all around us in abundance."
"For a few tickets more, they can request a special tune from the band."
"All the money will go to help the suffering soldiers."
"Why shouldn’t the well-to-do colored people work for the benefit of the suffering of our race?"
"Appeals for help too often are answered by cold neglect."
"Instead of flowery paths, days of perpetual sunshine, and bowers hanging with golden fruit, the road has been rugged and the garden full of thorns."
"But Abe,' said my brother, 'that’s all that made him go!'"
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."
"The people scrutinize every article that I wear with critical curiosity."
"If he knew that his wife was involved to the extent that she is, the knowledge would drive him mad."
"I have contracted large debts, of which he knows nothing, and which he will be unable to pay if he is defeated."
"I must dress in costly materials. The people scrutinize every article that I wear with critical curiosity."
"He is too honest to make a penny outside of his salary; consequently, I had, and still have, no alternative but to run in debt."
"He represents a principle, and to maintain this principle the loyal people of the loyal states will vote for him."
"Love is too strong to be blown away like gossamer threads."
"Why did you not come to me yesterday, Elizabeth?"
"What is good enough for her is good enough for me."
"You need not put on airs. I understand the whole thing."
"I shall not go outside of the hotel tonight."
"I was unable to sleep last night for thinking of you being forced to go to bed without anything to eat."
"I will give them a regular going over in the morning."
"It is strange that you should put the widow of President Abraham Lincoln in a three-cornered room in the attic of this miserable hotel."
"I have often been asked to write my life, as those who know me know that it has been an eventful one."
"At last I have acceded to the importunities of my friends, and have hastily sketched some of the striking incidents that go to make up my history."
"My life, so full of romance, may sound like a dream to the matter-of-fact reader, nevertheless everything I have written is strictly true."
"Much has been omitted, but nothing has been exaggerated."
"It is not pleasant, to be sure, to have a cook so literarily inclined as to be continually removing all your pet books from the library to the kitchen."
"But when Bridget or Dinah takes to writing books instead of reading them, and selects for themes the conversations and events that occur in the privacy of the family circle, we respectfully submit that it is carrying the thing a little too far."
"The public will be disappointed when they come to read her book. They will find it less piquant, less scandalous, than was expected, considering its source, while as a literary work it can lay claim to very little merit indeed."
"The very idea of domestic servants being persuaded to write books about the secrets of their employers, being crammed by literary adventurers with what they ought to say, and their lumbering and halting narration being helped at every stage by perhaps the very class of men who edit the flash papers of our cities, must be repulsive to every person of an ordinary degree of refinement."
"As I was born to servitude, it was not fault of mine that I was a slave; and, as I honestly purchased my freedom, may I not be permitted to express, now and then, an opinion becoming a free woman?"
"The line must be drawn somewhere, and we protest that it had better be traced before all the servant girls are educated up to the point of writing up the private history of the families in which they may be engaged."
"You who have never suffered cannot understand the full meaning of liberty."
"I was born a slave, but bought my freedom, and so was under no obligations to Mr. Lincoln for emancipation."
"He was as kind and considerate in his treatment of me as he was of any of the white people about the White House."
"I know what liberty is, because I remember what slavery was."
"I was Mr. Lincoln’s friend, am his friend now, and will always protect his memory by keeping my mouth closed concerning the many things which he unhappily suspected or imagined were going on around him."
"Fame and pride do not last, as I have found to my sorrow."
"The world has moved on, and I suspect my ‘literary curio’ will soon be forgotten again."
"Despite its disappointments and losses and heartbreaks, I would not have wished my life a single day shorter."