Take an interest in people. Get to know people. Get to know what they’ve been through before you pass judgment. That’s essential.
But let us not forget, too, that it was John Adams who nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. It was John Adams who insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. And it was President John Adams who made John Marshall chief justice of the Supreme Court. As a casting director alone, he was brilliant. Abigail.
The author perceptively outlines what might be an underrated aspect of his subject and of many others whose public achievements are of note – a “gift for friendship”. McCullough says Adams, despite his towering intellect and curmudgeonly demeanor, had a soft heart for other people and a genuine interest in their particulars.
He was always on the job early. Some mornings, at his desk before the staff arrived, he would answer the phone himself, telling callers what the library hours were, or, in reply to further questions, saying he knew because it was his library. “This is the old man himself.
Pen, ink, and paper and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking.
People then were still inclined to form opinions more from experience than information and it was the experience of most Brooklyn people that between their city and the other one, there was no comparison.
Asked how it was that he could do so much and accomplish so much, he said, “I’ve learned to use every one of all the odds and ends of the time.
On the matter of advancing age, he liked to say, “My sun is far past its meridian.
In truth, the color line, of which almost nothing was said in print, cut through every facet of daily life in the Zone, and it was as clearly drawn and as closely observed as anywhere in the Deep South or the most rigid colonial enclaves in Africa.
Had they taken a poll in Philadelphia in 1776, they would have scrapped the whole idea of independence. A third of the country was for it, a third of the country was against it, and the remaining third, in the old human way, was waiting to see who came out on top.
All American citizens, whether born here or elsewhere, whether of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we welcome every honest immigrant no matter from what country he comes, provided only that he leaves off his former nationality, and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.
In their allegiance to the King and to the rule of law, they saw themselves as the true American patriots. They had wanted no part of the rebellion.
He was also a vociferous champion of abstinence from hard or spirituous liquors – but then no one’s perfect. In.
Then, in the way of a fatherly sermon, he added, ‘We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better.
To what object are my views directed?” he asked. “Am I grasping at money, or scheming for power?” Yes, he was amassing a library, but to what purpose? “Fame, fortune, power say some, are the ends intended by a library. The service of God, country, clients, fellow men, say others. Which of these lie nearest my heart?
Measurements “are never enough. The artist’s eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors.
The smell of the midnight lamp is very unwholesome. Never defraud yourself of sleep, nor your walk. You need not now be in a hurry.
Later, following the funeral, he took all the family’s horses, including his own, up into one of the mountain ravines and shot them.
When the world is storm-driven and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.
Learning the secret of flight from a bird,” Orville would say, “was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.