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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

If you want the time to pass quickly, just give your note for 90 days.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

When you’ve got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

We all really basically have a lot of magic … it’s only those of us that choose to accept it that really understand it.