Cheap cigars come in handy; they stifle the odor of cheap politicians.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that cheap cigars can mask the unpleasantness associated with insincere politicians.
Ulysses S. Grant's quote uses a witty comparison to emphasize the negative characteristics often associated with politicians, particularly those who are insincere or untrustworthy. By stating that cheap cigars help cover up their odor, Grant points to the idea that sometimes superficial solutions are needed to cope with deeper issues, like the dishonesty in politics.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about political integrity to emphasize the need for authenticity.
The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization and to this we must look as our guide in the future.
Let us labor for the security of free thought, free speech, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and equal rights and privileges for all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion;.... leave the matter of religious teaching to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep church and state forever separate.
When news of the surrender first reached our lines our men commenced firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our prisoners, and we did not want to exult over their downfall.
I have made it a rule of my life to trust a man long after other people gave him up, but I don't see how I can ever trust any human being again.
A hero does for others. He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better. I am not that kind of person, but I want you to be. You could give something to her, to me, to those children in the quarter. You could give something I never could ... The white people out there are saying you don't have it-that you're a hog, not a man. But I know they are wrong.
You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
We laugh a lot. That's for sure. Sure beats the alternative, doesn't it?
I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.
Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.
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