If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

The voice of the people is the voice of humbug.

Where is the true religion? It is where women, men, youth, children, elderly, the illiterate and the educated are all attracted.

Love is the language of the heart. It can feel the movements of every atom and understand every language spoken or unspoken.

Nature can counsel nothing but crime.

The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.

The emptiness where I used pain to fill the hole no longer controls me, no longer calls me because of you.

Give thanks for what had been given to you, However little. Be pure, never falter.

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason.

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.

I learned from the git-go in the joint to get in touch with the soft, nurturing side of myself, the feminine side.

I love the streets, and the streets love me back. And when things ain't going the way they should go, they let you know... and when they happy, you gotta keep 'em happy.