Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Friends and Friendship
My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Regret, Disappointment, Remorse
We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Failure
It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: War
Still a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.
—Robert E. Lee
Private and public life are subject to the same rules; and truth and manliness are two qualities that will carry you through this world much better than policy, or tact, or expediency, or any other word that was ever devised to conceal or mystify a deviation from the straight line.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Honesty
The education of a man is never complete until he dies.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Education
Duty is the sublimest word in the language. You can never do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less.
—Robert E. Lee
A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Honor
I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavour to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people.
—Robert E. Lee
I have been up to see the (Confederate) Congress, and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: America
I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.
—Robert E. Lee
The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Honesty, Criticism
We have fought this fight as long, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Losing, Loss, Losers
We have fought this fight as long, and as well, as we know how. We have been defeated. There is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Success, Acceptance
In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Bible
My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: History
Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Authority
The devil’s name is dullness.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Boredom, Bores
Abandon your animosities and make your sons Americans.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Forgiveness, America
Let the tent be struck.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Last Words, Famous Last Words
Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Pain, Wisdom, One liners
I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Control
I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels themthe desire to do rightis precisely the same.
—Robert E. Lee
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: War
There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths.
—Robert E. Lee
Act with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future.
—Robert E. Lee
Topics: Perseverance
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Douglas MacArthur American Military Leader
- Albert Pike American Masonic Scholar
- H. Norman Schwarzkopf United States Army Officer
- William Tecumseh Sherman American Military General
- Omar Bradley American Military Leader
- George S. Patton American Military Leader
- Eric Shinseki American Army Officer
- Colin Powell American Military Leader
- Hyman G. Rickover American Admiral
- George Marshall American Military Leader
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