“Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. (long list of character deficiencies elided)…
His ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier has ever enjoyed.”

— Bill Bryson , A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 171)

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Bill Bryson 112

American author 1951

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“In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln accomplished something almost miraculous. That is to say, what he had to do was to fight off the challenge of Douglas from the Republican side and at the same time drive a wedge between Douglas and the Southern Democrats. I compared his achievement in that to Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, where Jackson fought two federal armies, beat them both and kept them close to Washington while he joined Lee before Richmond for the final battle of the seven days. It was a case of technical and strategic cleverness and profundity that is, I think, perhaps almost unrivaled in world history.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

“As a Special-Forces commander, Sharon was on the front—and in front of his men — performing daring assaults that saved Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Hated though he was abroad, Sharon was, nevertheless, a soldier in the style of 'Stonewall' Jackson, not Dubya the Deserter, to whom he and the Likudniks were often compared.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"A Soldier in the Style of 'Stonewall' Jackson" http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/a-soldier-in-the-style-of-stonewall-jackson/, WorldNetDaily.com, January 16, 2014.
2010s, 2014

“Fame is almost a poison. I couldn’t care less, in fact I lived better when I was a nobody.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, 16 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385083/

“For a soldier I listed, to grow great in fame.
And be shot at for sixpence a day.”

Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) British musician, songwriter, dramatist, novelist and actor

Letters (c. 1774).

“It was the normal working of the antisuccess mechanism. In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Geller Phenomenon (1976), p. 28

“I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Lesson for Today (1942)
Context: I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.
God bless himself can no one else be blessed.

I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori.
And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

“No man ever entered the White House under the burden of a more inconvenient past. And no President was ever denounced with greater ferocity. -- said of Andrew Jackson”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Review of Andrew Jackson: An Epic in Homespun by Gerald W. Johnson http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1928mar-00382, The American Mercury, March 1928, pp. 382-383 (March 1928)
1920s

“Making this crowd happy is the second easiest job you could ever have. First easiest… whoever gets to put Michael Jackson in a witness chair and create "reasonable doubt." How hard can that be? I don't even have a law degree and I think I could get Michael Jackson, y'know? I would just go, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… there he is! That's all I have. Y'all get a good look at my boy? See if you think he's capable of anything out of the ordinary. There he is." But it's a tough thing to prosecute Michael Jackson, y'know? Because everyone's entitled to a jury of their peers! You could run the vacuum up and down the gene pool 24/7 without suckin' up this much of whatever that has become. He has no peers. He's peerless. So why am I pickin' on poor little mutated Michael Jackson? Because Michael Jackson is a cautionary tale for the rest of us, folks. Michael Jackson is what happens when you keep fixin' it until it's broke!”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

“Andrew Jackson then is a sturdy obstacle to the Democrats' ongoing and increasingly frenzied campaign to erase from America's history all the unsavory things their party has championed for most of its existence, namely, slavery, secession, civil war, segregation, socialism, and, most recently the slaughter of infants. And so their longtime hero Andrew Jackson has been, as Sam Spade once said, chosen to take the fall alongside the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia to help erase the Democrats' consistently reprehensible behavior and policies from the history books. But there is a rub. None of the women the Democrats have so far raised as General Jackson's replacement in any way merit representation in the pantheon of patriots, nation-builders, and military leaders that grace the few denominations of our paper currency.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

“No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Regarding Ulysses S. Grant (4 March 1877), as quoted in Grant: A Biography https://books.google.com/books?id=cv5IbR5f9oMC&pg=PA449&lpg=PA449&dq=%22No+American+has+carried+greater+fame+out+of+the+White+House+than+this+silent+man+who+leaves+it+today%22&source=bl&ots=HoaHfwjqo6&sig=uaEqRbH27mRCUcR_OZatQlYcFK0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=owv8VPGnIIHsgwSyioC4AQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22No%20American%20has%20carried%20greater%20fame%20out%20of%20the%20White%20House%20than%20this%20silent%20man%20who%20leaves%20it%20today%22&f=false (1981), by William S. McFeely, p. 449
1870s

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