Stephanie Dray Quotes

Though the natural weakness of her body hinders her from doing what men can perform, she has a mind as valiant and as active for the good of her country as the best of us. - Plutarch

But I meant every word. I'd done my daughters no favors hiding behind feminine virtues, allowing men to do as they pleased with little more than sarcasm and secrecy for protest. Seeing my son half-dead, something changed in me - my willingness to obey, my willingness to accept, to let the men handle it was gone. When

No one wanted to serve anymore. Not when, under our new government, any man, whether a gentleman or a scoundrel, could say whatever he pleased and print whatever libels he wished without consequence. And the ignorant populists, spewing tobacco juice as they ranted, took full advantage. As if the notion that all men were created equal somehow meant that one need not aspire to knowledge and ability - all distinctions of class, breeding, or merit discarded, all notions of civility deserted.

From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder. But now we'd do more than patch with needle and thread. We'd have to weave together a whole tapestry of American life with nothing but our own hands, our own crops, and our own ingenuity. And I would prove myself able to the task. There

Maybe liberty must always be fought for. And you have kept fighting when others laid down their swords in defeat, or exhaustion, or corruption.

Dread skittered down my spine and brushed away the last tendrils of sleep. Pushing back the bed linens, I disentangled myself from Polly. Then I put my bare feet on the wooden floorboards and felt the early autumn chill on my legs. I glided soundlessly down the stairs, drawn inexorably to Papa's chamber, the only room where the candles still burned bright. I

For the first time in my life, I understood that a lie could protect those I loved. My

The heart swellings convince me of the folly of those who dare to think that any new ties can weaken the first and best of nature.

A marriage is like a union of states, requiring countless dinner table bargains to hold it together. There may be irreconcilable differences brewing below the surface that can come to open rupture. And there is, in a marriage, as in a nation, a certain amount of storytelling we do to make it understood. Even if those stories we tell to make our marriage, or country, work don't paint the whole picture, they're still true. But to leave Alexander Hamilton out of the painting entirely is a lie.

I had come to Rome in chains, but I would leave Rome a queen.

I was someone before I met Alexander Hamilton.
Not someone famous or important or with a learned philosophical understanding of all that was at stake in our revolution. Not a warrior or a philosopher or statesman.
But I was a patriot.
I was no unformed skein of wool for Hamilton to weave together into any tapestry he wished. That's important for me to remember now, when every thread of my life has become tangled with everything he was. Important, I think, in sorting out what can be forgiven, to remember my own experiences - the ones filled with my own yearnings that had nothing to do with him.
I was, long before he came into my life, a young woman struggling to understand her place in a changing world. And torn, even then, between loyalty, duty, and honor in the face of betrayal.

When the heart finds its one true desire, any separation and delay is unbearable.

When and where you are Gaius, I then and there am Gaia." The words make him smile, and he presses a soft kiss to my cheek. "When and where you are Gaia, I then and there am Gaius.

I never was a beauty. It was only that, until a few days ago, Alexander had made me feel like one.

Life is a bargain between bitter and sweet. Because there is a surfeit of bitter, we must savor the rare sweet.

For I find inside myself love where I'd not expected it to be. Both for a flawed nation and a flawed man. *Love*. A thing so powerful it can overcome the divide of time and death. It's still there inside me, like an eternal flame, though the light it casts is different now.

I was startled by his touch. I hadn't realized he was so close to me, because I seemed so far from myself.

And when Venutius was not busy fighting, he was content to spend his days hammering things near a forge and his evenings hammering, well ... as I said, we got on well.

What a high-minded thing revolution had seemed when it started; but now I wondered if, in trying to bring about liberty, we'd instead opened the gates of endless war, bloodshed, and immorality.

Like the sun and the moon, we were always meant to be in the same sky.

Kings and queens cry with family. Hide your grief from subjects and strangers.

Need me. Need me the way a woman is meant to need her husband.

Because the people we love are not entirely knowable. Even to themselves. But we love them anyway.

The only other choice is to live without love, alone.

Tell your papa I'll call upon him soon. Mr. Jefferson is still very much needed here in Paris, where his revolution remains undone. In my study, I have a copy of his Declaration of Independence in half a frame. The other half of the frame is empty. One day, with his help, it will house a Declaration of French Rights and they'll stand side by side, like proud brothers. Like France and America. Like your father and me." Ordinarily,

Selene's life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women's equality hasn't always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future.

This was, I thought, why love was so dangerous. I searched for the right words, when a certain warmth stole over me at the realization that her happiness was more important than fear. Even if she left me ...

Am I fated to have the men I've loved torment me in my weakest moments?

I'll tell you a secret about being happy, Tom. Sometimes you just have to pretend at it until it becomes real.

They'll try to make you forget who you are or try to make you ashamed. But you mustn't forget and you mustn't be ashamed.

I knew that a man was not only himself but also who he wished to be.

They'd murdered my husband. They'd taken him from me. But I still had his words, and they were my solace. Hamilton could still speak to me through those pages. His love letters. His Ideas. His essays. Thousands of pages.
They could kill him, but they couldn't silence him. Not if his story was told. Not if his work was preserved. And I resolved to collect the pieces of the legacy Alexander left behind.

It pains me to be an embarrassment to you, but I don't know how to remedy my flaws. All I know is that whenever I feel strongly compelled to act, a doubt always arises. And whereas the voice of reason is low and persuasive, passion is loud and imperious.

You are the magic in my soul. You are as constant in my heart as the moon in the night. You are my other half and I'll always seek you out somehow, even though it puts you in danger, and that is my shame.

Because I sensed in him the magic of a poet, a storyteller who can bind you with tales of things that had never been and could never be. And I felt myself so bound. Pulled under. At a loss for breath in his presence, just as I once was in a river, clinging to life.

But I think it better, in times like these, for us to acknowledge that marriage is a choice, one made, every day, anew.

We laughed, thinking it quite a wonderful thing to be envied. In those heady, happy days, we'd not learned yet that envy is a poison to which none are immune...