the human soul, by once suffering as much as it is capable of, purchases a strange and terrible immunity to all the rest of life's sorrows.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

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

I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging.

I know a lot of friends and family who were Joe Montana fans, where it didn't matter how well Steve Young did. They weren't going to cheer for him because he wasn't Joe Montana.

Do not ever threaten an Afghan with violence. We will rise as one and we will face every threat the way we have taken on thousands of previous armies and conquerors.

If it ain't about what's real, what's happenin' right now, it ain't the blues.

Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses.

O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.

I'm a natural blonde, but I feel like a brunette.

Just as Lincoln got contradictory advice from the extremists of both sides . . . so now I have to guard myself against the extremists of both sides.