266 Quotes by Sarah Vowell

So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox.

One of the slight variances between the Stalwarts and their fellow Republicans the Half-Breeds is that the Half-Breeds, partly out of frustration with the Civil War sainthood of Grant, were clean-shirt guys more interested in stumping for mild civil service reform – a platform whose merit would make for a less stirring campaign song. A bureaucrat should pass a test, hurrah, hurrah!

Jefferson’s pretty phrases were incomplete without the punctuation of French gunpowder. That.

In other words, the most ardent republicans since the fall of Rome were asking their king to help them prevail over the representative legislature of the world’s oldest constitutional monarchy, the great symbol and protector of British freedom. From.

To me, the highlight of the event is watching a reenactor in a long striped dress sitting alone on a blanket, winding yarn. Absorbed in the task of wrapping strands of wool around her hand, she never looks up. Watching her is so mesmerizing and oddly sacred that it never occurs to me to interrupt her and ask her name or how she got into the yarn-winding reenactment biz, maybe because she isn’t recreating; she is creating.

On October 1, Lafayette mailed Adrienne a bubbly update about the progress of his apparently adorable wound. “The surgeons are astonished by the rate at which it heals,” he cooed. “They are in ecstasy every time they dress it, and maintain that it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Listening to the radio every day for an entire year was a prison sentence. It was the most depressing, annoying, debilitating project I have ever undertaken, and I have a master’s degree in art history.

Lafayette, “I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.” Spoken like every only child ever. Lafayette.

French was assigned to sculpt allegorical figures of the continents. His America, from 1907, is one of the most concise depictions of our history I’ve ever seen: a European stepping on a Mayan head.