Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with. The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.

Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job; depression is when I lose mine.

People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.

The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.

Disillusionment can come as fast as a gust, but building faith that the government won't inflate again is like building a new sailboat, a project of years.

The donning of the ear buds marks the beginning of teen life, when children set off on their own for the passage through adolescence.

Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.

Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.

I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.

Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.

A simple mind and a loving heart is a source of miracle.

I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.

It strikes me as unfortunate that this approach - affording the same dignity to and investing in the same quality for a poor child as you would for your own - is so often received as provocative.

Nothing spoils human nature more than false zeal. The good nature of a heathen is more God-like than the furious zeal of a Christian.

What is it in us that makes us feel the need to keep pretending... we gotta let ourselves be.

Kisses are the remnants of paradise.

I release all criticism. I only give out that which I wish to receive in return. My love and acceptance of others is mirrored to me in every moment.

Stay away from Europe, stay away from Japan, Australia. If you go to the Western world, you're gonna pay more money. You can spend five months in Bali for what you'd spend in one month in Europe.

The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.

Know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.