Quotes from Doris Kearns Goodwin's books, and about them
Team of Rivals on Hamlet: “A few days earlier, anticipating Booth’s Hamlet, Lincoln had talked about the play with Francis Carpenter, the young artist who was at work on his picture depicting the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
Team of Rivals on Aesop's Fables: “He read and reread the Bible and Aesop’s Fables so many times that years later he could recite whole passages and entire stories from memory.”
Team of Rivals on Commentaries on the Laws of England: “He buried himself in the dog-eared pages of Blackstone’s Commentaries; he unearthed the thoughts in Chitty’s Pleadings; he analyzed precepts in Greenleaf’s Evidence and Story’s Equity Jurisprudence.”
Team of Rivals on King John: “Three months after Willie’s death, while reading aloud a passage from Shakespeare’s King John in which Constance grieves over the death of her son, Lincoln paused; he turned to a nearby army officer and said: “Did you ever dream of some lost friend, and feel that you were”
Team of Rivals on Waverley: “He had just finished and enjoyed three of Scott’s Waverley novels, but “there are a thousand things in them, as in Shakespeare, that one may enjoy more and much longer if one has somebody to converse with while dwelling upon them.””
Team of Rivals on Enoch Arden: “Later in the afternoon, he had listened to Fanny’s reading of “Enoch Arden” and remarked on how much he enjoyed it.”
Team of Rivals on Mortality: “He particularly cherished “Mortality,” by William Knox, and transcribed a copy for the Stantons.”
Team of Rivals on Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: “Gray’s “Elegy,” which Lincoln quoted in his small autobiography to explain his attitude toward his childhood poverty, asserts that “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/And waste its swee[tness on the desert air]””
Team of Rivals on Frederick the Great: “He sought guidance for his role as chief executive in Carlyle’s Frederick the Great and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.”
Team of Rivals on History of Julius Caesar: “she wrote a note to Sumner, telling him that she would be sending along a copy of Louis Napoleon’s manuscript on Julius Caesar, which she had just received from the State Department and knew he would want to read.”