Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.'

For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

The difference between charity and philanthropy is the distance of the soul... To be philanthropic is to give something, to be charitable is to give one's own heart.

The trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief’s bugle, but where to blow it.