...not one rebel defection — not even Robert E. Lee's — cost young Adams a personal pang; but Sumner's struck home. - Henry Adams

A new friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it. Even the greatest Senators seemed to inspire little personal affection in each other, and betrayed none at all.