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

Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.

You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes … without stirring it up from the bottom. That’s where the bitter dregs are!

I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home.

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.

I prepare myself well. I know what I can do before I go in. I’m always confident.

Before even considering an exercise and nutrition program, I recommend that the person put on some swim trunks and have somebody take a photo of them.

There is a history and a reality that we cannot ignore. The challenge before us is real, the questions we grapple with as elemental as life and death.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

Before this occurs,your love will be offered by the flask,not by the torrents of a river.

That’s more important even then what their background is or what they’ve done before, how good they are, how new they are or whatever. All that stuff is really secondary to just getting along with the person.

The day before every revolution that’s ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.

But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.