“[On religion:] Wasn’t it invented by man for a kind of solace? It’s as though he had said,”

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics.

You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends.

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he’s the hell of a diplomat.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country.

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation!

A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?

the human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life’s sorrows.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted.

Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It’s the most loquacious of all. You really can’t get a word in edgeways.

I’ll make me a nice comfortable garment to shut out the heat and the cold,’ and then it ends by becoming a strait-jacket.

The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.

Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.

Can art be completely invented? It’s a matter of shaping reality with the help of imagination.

The first ornament to have been invented, the cross, was of erotic origin.

All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.