Agnes Sligh Turnbull

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.

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.

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.

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

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

It’s them as take advantage that get advantage I this world.

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.