“You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the only earthly object of my affection.... I have now one request to make,... deny me not. Afford me the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before internment.”
— Letter returned to him unopened, to the father of his former fiancée Ann Coleman, written after her death, rumored to have been suicide soon after her breaking of their engagement. (1819).
“I am the last President of the United States!”
— A statement he is reported to have made several times to others after the secession of South Carolina, or as early as after the election of Abraham Lincoln (1860). —
“Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”
— Said to Abraham Lincoln on the ride back from Lincoln's inauguration as president (4 March 1861); as quoted in James Buchanan (2004) by Jean H. Baker, Pg 140; This or slightly paraphrased variants or abbreviated versions have also been been reported as having been said before the inauguration: Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home], you are a happy man indeed. If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.
“Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.”
— As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.
“What is right and what is practicable are two different things.”
— As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
