No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.

Trouble like the hill ahead straightens out when you advance upon it.

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.

Happiness is not something you get but something you do.

A bachelor is a man who can take a nap on top of a bedspread.

Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.

It is all right to say exactly what you think if you have learned to think exactly.

The way to achieve happiness is to have a high standard for yourself and a medium one for everyone else.

Too often in ironing out trouble someone gets scorched.

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.

No mother should lose her child.

True education is more powerful than money or weapons. It is the key to a magical land where nothing is impossible.

The opposite of compromise is character.

For forty years I was conscripted by the absolute, the neurosis. The absolute is gone. There remain countless tasks among which literature is in no way privileged.

God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. ... When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.

Dance is movement, and movement is life.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

In all my years of performing, no audience member has ever actually assaulted me. I consider this to be the singular triumph of my performing career.

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.