Like all born politicians, their eye was for the main chance rather than for the argument, and they found it easier to forswear a conviction than to forego a comfort.

You look as if you had lived on duty and it hadn't agreed with you.

Dignity is an anachronism.

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it, that counted - and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

there are times when life surprises one, and anything may happen, even what one had hoped for.

A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it.