Agnes Sligh Turnbull

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

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.

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!

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

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

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

Not even the Devil can call a woman “Slut” if he is not able to make her fall in love.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.