“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.”

Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes.

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.

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 might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it’s a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us.

We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.

When I did the first edit of Les plages, it was very dry and very square in a way. I was just saying the minimum. I said, Well, if this is the minimum, I don’t make it. So I tried to make it more refined.

You are the sand that doesn’t stick when I am dry and sad.

As a man of faith, God doesn’t bring you to things that you can’t get through. He doesn’t put you in a spot and then leave you out to dry.

My original appearance disappears just like tears disappear when falling from the eyes. Dried and then lost.

Saturate me with you, and never let me dry.

If I’m left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.