Theodore Roosevelt’s father wrote him, “I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.

(Taft’s mother’s) losing her firstborn had convinced her that children are treasures lent not given and that they may be recalled at any time. Parents, she firmly believed, could never love their children too much.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, “armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

As soon as (Teddy Roosevelt) received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Prepared so far ahead “freed his mind” from worry and...

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur...

Whereas Taft discouraged the young Yale student from extracurricular reading, fearful it would detract from required courses, Roosevelt read widely yet managed to stand near the top of his class. The breath of his numerous...

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: “He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.

We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.

She was never satisfied with anything less than perfection, but she was no grind. She was too interested in people.

I read them (articles TR wrote on his honeymoon) all over to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me.

If he (Teddy Roosevelt) lacked Will Taft’s immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality.

As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

In the reflected gaze of his (her husband’s) steady admiration, she saw the face of the girl he had fallen in love with.

The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.

One journalist complemented another that his article on a dispute, “had made both sides see themselves as they are.

Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. “I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do,” she would write seven decades later.

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

I liked the thought that the book I was now holding had been held by dozens of others.

The American people are strange in their attitudes toward their idols,” he (Taft) mused. They lead them on and then “cut their legs from under them,” simply “to make their fall all the greater.

The books my mother read and reread provided a broader, more adventurous world, and escape from the confines of her chronic illness. Her interior life was enriched even as her physical life contracted. If she...

I have plenty of information now, but I can’t get it into words. I’m afraid it’s too big a task for me. I wonder if I will find everything in life too big for my...

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

Teddy Roosevelt “had relished “every hour” of every day as president. Indeed, (he was) fearing the “dull thud” he would experience upon returning to private life.

People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under...

One-time rival and subsequent usurper Secretary of State Seward finally settled into an assessment of Lincoln that, “His confidence and compassion increase every day.

For your penance, say two Hail Marys, three our Fathers, and,” he added, with a chuckle, “say a special prayer for the Dodgers.

(Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with “girls’stories” such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl.

(Theodore) Roosevelt considered his experience with ‘fellow ranchmen on what was then the frontier’ to be ‘the most educational asset’ of his entire life, instrumental to his success in becoming president.