“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart…filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.”

Biggest affirmative argument I know in favor of ‘If a man die, shall he live again?’ is just the way you feel inside you that nothin’ can stop you from livin’ on.

I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow.

A person may encircle the globe with mind open only to bodily comfort. Another may live his life on a sixty-foot lot and listen to the voices of the universe.

Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain’t. So the results of man’s labor will never be equal.

It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us.

Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies close to your heart.

Some girls are apparently born with dates; some through much personal activity, achieve them; but others seem by necessity to have dates thrust upon them.

It takes a small town to keep you humble.

The greatest antidote in the world for grief is work, and the necessity of work.

You wouldn’t think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.

They are the most painful tears in the world … the tears of the aged … for they come from dried beds where the emotions have long burned low.

When I was young I had no means or time, and now I have the means and time, I have no youth.

Things last so much longer than people.

For though love has been ridiculed and disgraced, exchanged and bartered, dragged through the courts, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, the bright, steady glow of its fire still shines on the hearth-stones of countless homes.

not all clever words are true. … And inversely most things that are true are not clever.

Katherine it was who took upon herself the complete charge of [Junior’s] speech. Not an insignificant “have went” nor an infinitesimal

You can’t allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, ‘Merry Christmas?’ Give me a break. If people don’t like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.

And whether these poor people would not fare far better if they were entrusted to the devils in Hell than they do at the hands of the devils of the New World who masquerade as Christians.

For a Jewish guy, I’ve recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.

At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.

Everybody loves a good Christmas song if you do it right.