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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.