Harry Turtledove

Apart from the Volunteer companies, a lot of men in San Francisco carried guns for self-protection—not least, for protection from other men carrying guns.

“I see that this photograph shows me you have been imperfectly truthful here,” he told them, having been too well brought up to call a woman a liar to her face.

Longstreet, as far as Jackson was concerned, made a better politician than a soldier; he was full of the deviousness politics required.

“You done opened my eyes, and I reckon I can go and open some other folks’ eyes my own self. You got yourself a—what’s the Bible word?—A disciple, that’s what it is.”

“Good luck to you, Mr. Blackford,” Lincoln said. “Be the truth’s disciple, not mine. Follow the truth, wherever it may lead you.”

The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change.

“So you’re one of the ones who still say ‘if there be,’ are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but ‘if there are’ has always been good enough for me.”

“I’m an old man.” Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. “The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less.”

Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.

Radicals hire bomb-throwing maniacs. Rich men hire lawyers. They’re more expensive, but they ought to be, because they do more damage.

“You’re a Democrat, aren’t you general?” somebody asked.

“What sensible man isn’t?” Custer returned.

Then he laughed at himself. If Fort Benton counted for civilization, he’d been out in the wilderness too long.

He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead.

He knew what he imagined and what was real were not one and the same. Knowing it and coming to terms with it were not one and the same, either.