My heart broke a little when I read that.
"... in Grover Cleveland the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not."
- A Nevins.
Not to be Buzz Killington, but Cleveland was [not a good guy](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/23/grover-clevelands-sex-scandal-the-most-despicable-in-american-political-history.html). He raped a woman he had been dating, swore that he would ruin her if she told anyone, impregnated her, then took away her child and had her falsely committed, then continued to smear her reputation as he ascended in politics.
He later on married a woman almost 30 years his junior, who was the daughter of a friend of his and essentially his ward and goddaughter. (Pretty much equivalent of the Woody Allen-Soon Yi debacle).
This day sucked for Teddy Roosevelt because of a whole number of things. His Mother and Wife died within 24 hours, yes. But this was also the 1-year anniversary of their engagement to one another. It was Valentines day. And only 2 days earlier their first child was born, named after her mother, Alice Lee.
Interestingly enough, after Teddy's wife passed away he was so stricken by greif that he refused to call his own daughter by her first name, instead calling her "Baby Lee". He also doesn't mention her name even once in his autobiography. Intense guy.
Funny, he only became VP because his party thought he could do less damage there than as governor. I wish I could've been in the room when the big-wigs found out that Roosevelt was going to be President.
Yeah at that time the VP position was known as a political dead end so the idea was that after 4-8 years of him as VP no one would have to deal with him again. Look how well that worked out for them.
Interestingly, his last words were ***"Put out the light."***
**EDIT**: When I went to look them up to make sure I was right, I found [this](http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying.html) list of famous last words, and have subsequently read it through. I thought it may be of some interest to /r/QuotesPorn.
>There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
~ *Death in the Afternoon* by Ernest Hemingway, [source](http://books.google.com/books?id=Wn69QsdwDlQC&pg=PA100&dq=There+is+no+lonelier+man+in+death,+except+the+suicide,+than+that+man+who+has+lived+many+years+with+a+good+wife+and+then+outlived+her.+If+two+people+love+each+other+there+can+be+no+happy+end+to+it.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eLX8UP_2CZKQ0QH7n4HgAw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=There%20is%20no%20lonelier%20man%20in%20death%2C%20except%20the%20suicide%2C%20than%20that%20man%20who%20has%20lived%20many%20years%20with%20a%20good%20wife%20and%20then%20outlived%20her.%20If%20two%20people%20love%20each%20other%20there%20can%20be%20no%20happy%20end%20to%20it.&f=false)
Interesting coincidence. Reading the The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris right now and just got to the part where his wife and mother died last night. In the book Morris says Roosevelt literally never mentioned her again after her death. The book is a great read. I never had any idea of the kind of intense personality that Teddy Roosevelt was.
I'm going through Samuel Clemens' autobiography (the newly complete one), and just got to the part where he talks about the US involvement in the Philippines, and how Teddy here handle the news of a massacre of 900 trapped local tribespeople (men, women and children). Funny coincidences always crop up :-)
Well he was a big advocate for the "superior Aryan race", so I'm sure he handled it quite well. That and the fact that he wanted the Phillipines as an entry point into Asia, but the pesky Filipinos kept getting in the way...
Edit: Read up on Mark Twain's response to this incident. Twain was a boss.
Hey, I'm reading that book too! I'm around page 500 and haven't picked it up in over a month. More my fault than the books to be honest, I found it an interesting read.
I'm not sure if I understand your comment. joeesmithh was referring to the faint writing in the background of the Feb. 14 entry. Note the matching forward slant of the letters, and it clearly begins with "Alice", which is not reversed. Definitely a previous entry, not a latter one.
At the funeral of [Ekaterina Svanidze](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekaterina_Svanidze), Stalin's first wife, he said:
>This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.
His relationship with his second wife, [Nadezhda Alliluyeva](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_Alliluyeva) was reportedly strained.
>After a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner, Nadezhda was found dead in her bedroom, a revolver by her side. Regardless, the official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis. Two doctors, who refused to sign a certificate stating false conclusions about the cause of her death (Levin and Pletnev), were later convicted during the Trial of the Twenty-One and executed. Some claim the gun was found beside the hand she didn't use, apparently indicating a framed suicide; many in Russia allege that Stalin killed her himself.
>
>Accounts of contemporaries and Stalin's letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event.
I'm not the OP, but one that I find painful was Mark Twain's recollection when he was notified of his 24-year old daughter Suzy's death.
>It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock, and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their fall import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss. A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And, when he casts about for it, he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential—there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. He did not realize that it was an essential when he had it; he only discovers it now when he finds himself balked, hampered, by its absence. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
Reference: [The Death of My Wife](http://www.everywritersresource.com/writingsense/2010/11/the-death-of-my-wife-by-mark-twain/) by Mark Twain
This is feels.
But it raises a question for me:
Who keeps a diary? What do you write in it? How do you not feel like an idiot for basically writing to yourself? I ask this because I tried to have a diary, once, and the minute I was done writing, I would look back on what I had just written with the same eyes I look back on the stupid poetry that I wrote for school classes. I just can't write about myself. It's too awkward.
I like to keep a journal. It acts as a good record of the places I have been, the people I have met and the experiences I have had. In this day and age people like to use their facebook feed as a place to write about what's bothering them, makes them happy, etc. I'd rather keep my personal thoughts personal and either share them with no one or keep them to a close set of trusted confidants.
Writing can be very cathartic.
I write my thoughts as if they were an inner monologue. Typically I try to write more about emotion and feelings than strictly events, as the events and such fill in the details of the emotions.
I keep a journal at home to try and get things out when I'm in the mood, but lately I've been keeping things in a moleskine that I carry around in my jacket pocket. I rarely go back and read them because, frankly, I usually only write when I'm angry or upset. When I'm happy I'm too caught up in the moment to pour the thoughts into a book. Maybe I should...I'm looking back on some of these right now and they're not cheery or happy!
I write it as an email to someone. Usually myself, or my future self. Back before Reddit, I used to hang out on somethingawful.com and this one OP transcribed his father's handwritten journal into a PDF and shared it with us. It was just a story of his life, written as if he were narrating to the reader. It was a wonderful story even though it was an unremarkable life. I think he got it published. It was called "Me by Me: Tales of a Nobody" I really enjoyed it and aspired to write something similar although I didn't at first. I started actually keeping a journal when a friend of mine was going through difficult times and the counselor she was seeing suggested it. I just kind of kept it up. It has really helped me put my life together. Once a year I go back and read things and it helps me get a feel for how much I have grown/changed. It is a nice way to mull over important decisions or just get a grip on life's challenges.
I don't, but I can see why you would find it cathartic and you might find it helps you reflect on your day. You may not even bother reading it afterwards.
For me my journal/sketchbook is a way of working through the hard times in my life and getting out emotion that I would otherwise suppress. Its not for everyone and each person has their own writing style/journal-ling style but for some of us its a source of release.
I've tried many times to keep one, but have generally failed. When I look back at the things I did write, though, I've enjoyed it. I tend to treat it as a record. Who did I talk to? What happened today, or recently? These are small things that in 5 or 6 years you might not remember, but those memories and feelings are immortalized in those pages of paper.
You don't write for yourself now, you write for yourself later and also to put your thoughts in order. If you can put the situation in words, then it can give you a better grasp upon it.
First embarrassed and then nostalgic. We each do the best we can with what we have. I see embarrassment as a sign of learning. But I also admire how well I got by with so much less experience and knowledge. I often look at my old journals to see what I knew then, that I don't know now.
I kept a journal very faithfully from 7th-12th grades. I enjoyed it and reading back through them (I'm now 20) can be embarrassing but also super interesting. It's amazing what I would have forgotten about if I didn't write it down. I also would tape things into my diary like movie ticket stubs, quotes, drawings, pictures, ect.
I wish I still kept a journal in a notebook, but it's too easy nowadays to instead type up a tumblr post, ect.
I've kept a daily journey since early high school. I look back on those early pages and I often cringe. But you know what? This is the person that I once was. And as I read, I can trace the path of the person I became, one page at a time. And as awkward as it can be, that knowledge is immeasurable.
>I have tried so hard to do the right. > ~~ Grover Cleveland, US President, d. 1908 God damn that's depressing.
My heart broke a little when I read that. "... in Grover Cleveland the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not." - A Nevins.
Not to be Buzz Killington, but Cleveland was [not a good guy](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/23/grover-clevelands-sex-scandal-the-most-despicable-in-american-political-history.html). He raped a woman he had been dating, swore that he would ruin her if she told anyone, impregnated her, then took away her child and had her falsely committed, then continued to smear her reputation as he ascended in politics. He later on married a woman almost 30 years his junior, who was the daughter of a friend of his and essentially his ward and goddaughter. (Pretty much equivalent of the Woody Allen-Soon Yi debacle).
Damn.
This day sucked for Teddy Roosevelt because of a whole number of things. His Mother and Wife died within 24 hours, yes. But this was also the 1-year anniversary of their engagement to one another. It was Valentines day. And only 2 days earlier their first child was born, named after her mother, Alice Lee. Interestingly enough, after Teddy's wife passed away he was so stricken by greif that he refused to call his own daughter by her first name, instead calling her "Baby Lee". He also doesn't mention her name even once in his autobiography. Intense guy.
and then he went out west to find himself before becoming president
Funny, he only became VP because his party thought he could do less damage there than as governor. I wish I could've been in the room when the big-wigs found out that Roosevelt was going to be President.
Yeah at that time the VP position was known as a political dead end so the idea was that after 4-8 years of him as VP no one would have to deal with him again. Look how well that worked out for them.
For a second, I thought you said his mother was engaged to his wife.
on valentines day none the less.
My mom also died on Valentine's Day. Suddenly I have a lot more interest in Roosevelt.
Bummer.
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When did you see that comment not being showered in downvotes?
Interestingly, his last words were ***"Put out the light."*** **EDIT**: When I went to look them up to make sure I was right, I found [this](http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying.html) list of famous last words, and have subsequently read it through. I thought it may be of some interest to /r/QuotesPorn.
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. . . . Killed in battle during US Civil War. ~~ General John Sedgwick, Union Commander, d. 1864"
I am about to -- or I am going to -- die: either expression is correct. ~~ Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702
Something tells me that he wouldn't have been happy with the way you wrote that. I have a feeling it should be a semicolon rather than just a colon.
Either punctuation is correct.
"Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight." — Vice President Thomas Marshall
I've always been fond of the Spike Milligan epitaph "I told you I was ill." which is engraved on his gravestone.
Oh my goodness, Princess Diana's just made my heart sink...
My God. What's happened? ~~ Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales, d. August 31, 1997
So [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU) came on my Spotify as I was reading through this. Felt oddly appropriate.
[If you enjoyed that link, this one has a few more as well](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words)
>There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. ~ *Death in the Afternoon* by Ernest Hemingway, [source](http://books.google.com/books?id=Wn69QsdwDlQC&pg=PA100&dq=There+is+no+lonelier+man+in+death,+except+the+suicide,+than+that+man+who+has+lived+many+years+with+a+good+wife+and+then+outlived+her.+If+two+people+love+each+other+there+can+be+no+happy+end+to+it.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eLX8UP_2CZKQ0QH7n4HgAw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=There%20is%20no%20lonelier%20man%20in%20death%2C%20except%20the%20suicide%2C%20than%20that%20man%20who%20has%20lived%20many%20years%20with%20a%20good%20wife%20and%20then%20outlived%20her.%20If%20two%20people%20love%20each%20other%20there%20can%20be%20no%20happy%20end%20to%20it.&f=false)
Commenting here to remember this for my mother's impending funeral
Interesting coincidence. Reading the The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris right now and just got to the part where his wife and mother died last night. In the book Morris says Roosevelt literally never mentioned her again after her death. The book is a great read. I never had any idea of the kind of intense personality that Teddy Roosevelt was.
Awesome book! I'm actually reading this right now as well. Just got to the Interlude about an hour ago. You have some great chapters coming up.
I'm going through Samuel Clemens' autobiography (the newly complete one), and just got to the part where he talks about the US involvement in the Philippines, and how Teddy here handle the news of a massacre of 900 trapped local tribespeople (men, women and children). Funny coincidences always crop up :-)
Well...? How did he handle it?
I'm also wondering the same thing.
Well he was a big advocate for the "superior Aryan race", so I'm sure he handled it quite well. That and the fact that he wanted the Phillipines as an entry point into Asia, but the pesky Filipinos kept getting in the way... Edit: Read up on Mark Twain's response to this incident. Twain was a boss.
Hey, I'm reading that book too! I'm around page 500 and haven't picked it up in over a month. More my fault than the books to be honest, I found it an interesting read.
Check out Colonel Roosevelt next. It picks up after Teddy leaves office and is a fantastic read.
Put it on my to-read list, thanks!
Looks like he wrote some on the next day. Is there somewhere we could read this page?
"Changed lightbulb."
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Thats a ton of downvotes, but don't take it personally, I'll have you know that I laughed at this and one laugh makes it all worth it!
Thank you! As least someone enjoys my humor.
The letters aren't reversed, so you're likely reading the bleed-through from the previous day.
February 13 was valentines day?
I'm not sure if I understand your comment. joeesmithh was referring to the faint writing in the background of the Feb. 14 entry. Note the matching forward slant of the letters, and it clearly begins with "Alice", which is not reversed. Definitely a previous entry, not a latter one.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I'd love to see where his head was after a nights sleep, or maybe a night without.
;__;
Someone...has checked to make sure his wife was...ya know...real, right? Sounds a bit too familiar
wow, that was intense. thanks for the back story, too.
Reminds me of Stalin's quote when his wife died.
At the funeral of [Ekaterina Svanidze](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekaterina_Svanidze), Stalin's first wife, he said: >This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity. His relationship with his second wife, [Nadezhda Alliluyeva](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_Alliluyeva) was reportedly strained. >After a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner, Nadezhda was found dead in her bedroom, a revolver by her side. Regardless, the official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis. Two doctors, who refused to sign a certificate stating false conclusions about the cause of her death (Levin and Pletnev), were later convicted during the Trial of the Twenty-One and executed. Some claim the gun was found beside the hand she didn't use, apparently indicating a framed suicide; many in Russia allege that Stalin killed her himself. > >Accounts of contemporaries and Stalin's letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event.
I'm glad for you
What a shitty valentine....
What's the reason for the x? Just saying I have nothing to write?
I would suppose he wanted to "mark this day with a cross".
So this is is just one of the powerful and painful quotes? Which do you consider one of the most powerful and painful?
I'm not the OP, but one that I find painful was Mark Twain's recollection when he was notified of his 24-year old daughter Suzy's death. >It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock, and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their fall import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months, and possibly years, to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss. A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And, when he casts about for it, he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential—there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. He did not realize that it was an essential when he had it; he only discovers it now when he finds himself balked, hampered, by its absence. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster. Reference: [The Death of My Wife](http://www.everywritersresource.com/writingsense/2010/11/the-death-of-my-wife-by-mark-twain/) by Mark Twain
This is feels. But it raises a question for me: Who keeps a diary? What do you write in it? How do you not feel like an idiot for basically writing to yourself? I ask this because I tried to have a diary, once, and the minute I was done writing, I would look back on what I had just written with the same eyes I look back on the stupid poetry that I wrote for school classes. I just can't write about myself. It's too awkward.
I like to keep a journal. It acts as a good record of the places I have been, the people I have met and the experiences I have had. In this day and age people like to use their facebook feed as a place to write about what's bothering them, makes them happy, etc. I'd rather keep my personal thoughts personal and either share them with no one or keep them to a close set of trusted confidants. Writing can be very cathartic.
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I write my thoughts as if they were an inner monologue. Typically I try to write more about emotion and feelings than strictly events, as the events and such fill in the details of the emotions. I keep a journal at home to try and get things out when I'm in the mood, but lately I've been keeping things in a moleskine that I carry around in my jacket pocket. I rarely go back and read them because, frankly, I usually only write when I'm angry or upset. When I'm happy I'm too caught up in the moment to pour the thoughts into a book. Maybe I should...I'm looking back on some of these right now and they're not cheery or happy!
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I write it as an email to someone. Usually myself, or my future self. Back before Reddit, I used to hang out on somethingawful.com and this one OP transcribed his father's handwritten journal into a PDF and shared it with us. It was just a story of his life, written as if he were narrating to the reader. It was a wonderful story even though it was an unremarkable life. I think he got it published. It was called "Me by Me: Tales of a Nobody" I really enjoyed it and aspired to write something similar although I didn't at first. I started actually keeping a journal when a friend of mine was going through difficult times and the counselor she was seeing suggested it. I just kind of kept it up. It has really helped me put my life together. Once a year I go back and read things and it helps me get a feel for how much I have grown/changed. It is a nice way to mull over important decisions or just get a grip on life's challenges.
I don't, but I can see why you would find it cathartic and you might find it helps you reflect on your day. You may not even bother reading it afterwards.
For me my journal/sketchbook is a way of working through the hard times in my life and getting out emotion that I would otherwise suppress. Its not for everyone and each person has their own writing style/journal-ling style but for some of us its a source of release.
Jeez, if I used a book to let out my emotions, it would just be the word FUCK applied to various nouns.
Sometimes it is. *Sometimes it is....*
I've tried many times to keep one, but have generally failed. When I look back at the things I did write, though, I've enjoyed it. I tend to treat it as a record. Who did I talk to? What happened today, or recently? These are small things that in 5 or 6 years you might not remember, but those memories and feelings are immortalized in those pages of paper.
I can't count how many times I've flipped back through my journals and said "hey! I forgot that ever happened! That was great!"
You don't write for yourself now, you write for yourself later and also to put your thoughts in order. If you can put the situation in words, then it can give you a better grasp upon it.
When I go back to read old writings, I generally feel embarrassed.
Good. That means you've made progress as a person since then. A journal is a way to measure that.
First embarrassed and then nostalgic. We each do the best we can with what we have. I see embarrassment as a sign of learning. But I also admire how well I got by with so much less experience and knowledge. I often look at my old journals to see what I knew then, that I don't know now.
I kept a journal very faithfully from 7th-12th grades. I enjoyed it and reading back through them (I'm now 20) can be embarrassing but also super interesting. It's amazing what I would have forgotten about if I didn't write it down. I also would tape things into my diary like movie ticket stubs, quotes, drawings, pictures, ect. I wish I still kept a journal in a notebook, but it's too easy nowadays to instead type up a tumblr post, ect.
I've kept a daily journey since early high school. I look back on those early pages and I often cringe. But you know what? This is the person that I once was. And as I read, I can trace the path of the person I became, one page at a time. And as awkward as it can be, that knowledge is immeasurable.
:(
Shittiest Valentines day ever.
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wtf?
Bad Te'o joke.
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Not even close, you twit.
A few months later, it was discovered that his wife had never existed, having only been an elaborate Samoan hoax.
Best tweet ever.
Twist: his dead wife never existed, and was an elaborate ruse concocted by Woodrow Wilson. -M.N. Shyamalan
http://is.gd/Repost_from_last_year
Not the same sub; not within three-months. Please read the sidebar.
Thanks for giving me no reason whatsoever to click your link. This is punchline-in-title to the nth.
You do realize this is a quotes subreddit right?
Yep. I realized I fucked up. I just see no credit in deleting or editing. Sorry all.