Words of Wisdom from Mornings on Horseback

McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback. Simon & Schuster Inc. New York: 1981.
"Organs are made for action...they are made to work, not to be; and when they work well they can be well."
-Henry Hyde Salter, p. 108
"Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies."
-Theodore Roosevelt Sr. p. 165
"Oddly, for all his quick success in politics, the passion and energy he exuded, he was still unable, or unwilling, to accept politics as his lifework. He never spoke of it as a career or calling...among hte few with whom he was most candid, he admitted to no clear vision of a lifework. In the parlance of later-day psychologists he had still to find an occupational identity, and it troubled him."
--McCullough, p. 280
"The sole, overwhelming lesson was the awful brevity of life, the sense that the precipice awaited not just somewhere off down the road, but at any moment. An asthmatic childhood had shown that life could be stifled, cut off, unless one fought back, and all Papa's admonitions to get action, to seize the moment, had the implicit message that there was not much time after all. Father had died at forty-six; Mittie had been only forty-eight; Alice, all of twenty-two, her life barely begun. Nothing lasts. Winter waits."
--McCullough, p. 285
"There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."
Teddy, p. 336
"Much has been given to us, and so, much will be expected of us; and we must take heed to use aright the gifts entrusted to our care."
Teddy, p. 349 (really, you should read the whole speech)
"It is of more importance that we should show ourselves honest, brave, truthful, and intelligent, than that we should own all the railways and grain elevators in the world."
Teddy, p. 349-350