"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."
General R.E.Lee , from
his postwar writings , quoted in Jones, "Life and Letters of Robert Edward
Lee" 1906
"I am a soldier. It is my duty to obey
orders. It is enough to turn one's hair gray to spend one day in the Congress.
The members are patriotic and
earnest, but they neither take the responsibility of action nor will they clothe
me with the authority to act for them."
General R.E.Lee , quoted in Gordon
"Reminiscences of the Civil War" ,
1903
"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 dispair 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."
General R.E.Lee , letter to Lt. Colonel
Charles Marshall , shortly before Lee's death , quoted in Charles Flood , 'Lee:
The Last Years." 1981
The above quotes of the most revered General Robert E. Lee were posted on the SCV dispatch by Joseph Alarid, a member of the Deaderick -Doremus-Thurmond SCV Camp 1631 in Santa Barbara ,CA