Agnes Sligh Turnbull

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!

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.

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation! … Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It’s the most loquacious of all. You really can’t get a word in edgeways.

I think we foreshorten our own viewpoint if we consider any state of mind, or society, or government as final. Growth and change! We can’t get away from them.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. 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; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. 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 a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear somethingyes, there it was quite clear. Dont you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italiansgoing on maneuversyes, only on maneuvers!

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

When I feel like dancing, I dance. I don’t care if anyone else is dancing or if everyone else is laughing at me. I dance.

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn’t deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.