But the man just didn’t believe in all of that incarnation stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time.

He told his wife I’m truly sorry to distress you, but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.

At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against the living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled outside miserably in the snow.

He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. He stood there listening to the bells, Adeste Fidelis, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.

Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another and then another.

He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then he went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.

The man I’m going to tell you about was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family and upright in his dealings with other men.

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

Stay in your seat come times of trouble. It’s only people who jump off the roller coaster who get hurt.

You can always tell when you are on the road to success; it’s uphill all the way.

The years don’t always add wisdom, but they do add perspective.

If you don’t live it, you don’t believe it.

If we cannot count on ourselves to do the right thing how can we count on anyone or anything else?

In big towns the 100 are nervous. But in small towns, it’s the one.

Retiring is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn’t take any practice.

If ‘pro’ is the opposite of ‘con’ what is the opposite of ‘progress’?

Self-government won’t work without self-discipline

I just get up again when I fall down.

I have never seen a monument erected to a pessimist

Like what you do. If you don’t like it, do something else.

God said, I need somebody who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then pain’n from tractor back, put in another seventy-two hours.

God said, it had to be somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake, and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder.

God said, somebody, to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds.

God said, I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.

God said, and on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.

In small towns as well as large, good people outnumber bad people by 100 to 1.

So they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anybody’s.

At that moment the church bells began to ring.

Each generation goes through a little hell and comes out heat tempered and better than before.

Cut out the free feed for the boss hogs at the public trough and the spill-over they’ve been leaving us. We’ll manage.

Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Each generation imagines that we’re all going to hell.

The indignation of politicians is NOT a good measure of the gravity of any situation.

It was self-serving politicians who convinced recent generations of Americans that we could all stand in a circle with our hands in each other’s pockets and somehow get rich.

Fathers are men who give daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough.

For me, success is, during this early pilgrimage, to leave the woodpile a little higher than I found it.

We’ve drifted away from being fishers of men to being keepers of the aquarium.

They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?

Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be.

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because the government is not. Why not? Animals don’t vote.

Ever since I made tomorrow my favorite day, I’ve been uncomfortable looking back.

I was never one who sought to make the small man tall by cutting off the legs of a giant.

A policeman must know everything – and not tell. He must know where all the sin is and not partake.

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is.

Now you know the rest of the story.

When your outgo exceeds your income, the upshot may be your downfall.

Everything you use in a modern lifestyle has to be made using a tool of some sort.

Communism has defeated itself everywhere except. in American colleges.

Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave.

All my life I wanted to play golf like Jack Nicklaus, and now I do.

Mr. President, I love you, but you’re wrong.

Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore,’ shoot six, and write down five.

Yoga aims to bring about a situation where the mind is quieter and more effective. It’s not only about relaxation, it’s also about improving our energy.

Delay, says Dr. Manner, is a luxury which people with right-now cancers cannot afford.