Agnes Sligh Turnbull

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.

[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.

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 idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

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.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

Every artist was first an amateur.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Wisdom is better than silver and gold. I was hopeless, now I’m on hope road.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.

It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.