In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

Like a kick in the butt, the force of events wakes slumberous talents.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

A writer's work is to witness things.

Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling.

Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

When I was 18 I worked with the Ringling Brothers circus, taking care of menagerie animals. I used to rather deliberately risk my life with the big cats.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

The milking machines sounded tranquilizing and there was the collegiality of seventy animal spirits thriving warming the barn with cud chewing nose snuffling and sisterly mammalhood.

Silence is exhilarating at first as noise is but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm women with a hug and the hug wears better in the long run.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile.

Silence is exhilarating at first “ as noise is “ but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

I am a very open, social, friendly person, and when it comes to people approaching me and asking for an autograph, I am totally cool with doing any of that. It's a lot of fun.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.

Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

So the thing that's beautiful about the Rolleiflex is that I open the camera up from the top and put my face in and that the camera's all about composition and all about light.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public. This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends.

Our aristocracy, unlike that of Europe, is open to all comers.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

I'm open to getting more equipment, but I really won't have time to look into that until after the tour.

A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

I have a very open line of communication with both my children.

To play a good guy is nice because in a way, he is so open for answers.

If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

The decision to open up Bahrain to embrace all people indiscriminately was fostered in me ever since I was a child.

In all feats of fire-eating it should be noted that the head is thrown well back, so that the flame may pass out of the open mouth instead of up into the roof, as it would if the head were held naturally.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.

One of our most noble political tasks is to open up trust.

On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there.