"For he will smile, and give you with unflinching courtesy, prayers, trappings, letters, uniforms and orders, photographs, kindness, valor and advice, and do it with such grace and gentleness, that you will know you have the whole of him penned down, mapped out. Easy to understand. And so you have. All things except the heart. The heart he kept a secret to the end, from all the picklocks of biographers."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

Sources

Epitaph for Robert E. Lee, read by Shelby Foote

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(documentary)