Quotes by Robert E. Lee

“Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.”

“Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one.”

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.”

“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.”

“I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”

“Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.”

“We have fought this fight as long, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.”

“I have fought against the people of the North because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.”

“Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.”

“I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.”

“My chief concern is to try to be an humble, earnest Christian.”

“Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.”

“If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, youll be amazed at the results.”

“War is cruelty. Theres no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

“Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.”

“We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.”

“I tremble for my country when I hear of confidence expressed in me. I know too well my weakness, that our only hope is in God.”

“The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is 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.”

“I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.”

“Our country demands all our strength, all our energies. To resist the powerful combination now forming against us will require every man at his place. If victorious, we have everything to hope for in the future. If defeated, nothing will be left for us to live for. My whole trust is in God, and I am ready for whatever He may ordain.”