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You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.
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I think the kids in school that laughed at the clothes that we wore and the house that we lived in, and then my mother had to cut hair... I think that was a good motivator. Every time they laughed at me, they just built a fire, and there was only one way to put it out - to try and show 'em I was as good as they were.
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Being a Baptist won't keep you from sinning, but it'll sure as hell keep you from enjoying it.
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When I was a kid, I used to think, 'Man, if I could ever afford all the ice cream I want to eat, that's as rich as I ever want to be.'
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I was a hard-workin' little boy. Oh, I worked. Pullin' cotton, shockin' grain, cuttin' wheat, loadin' wheat, choppin' cotton, cleanin' chicken houses, milkin' cows, plowin'.
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I went further on less talent than anyone, but I was a damned good entertainer.
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Sausage is a great deal like life. You get out of it about what you put into it.
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I loved music since the Seth Ward Baptist Church outside of Plainview.
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A lot of things I am, and a lot of things I am not. But I think I'm about as good an American as there is. I love this country. It's been very, very good to me. And it will be good to anybody if they are willing to give of themselves.
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I made more money yesterday than I ever thought I'd make in an entire lifetime. But it's like somebody's going to take it all away from me and I'll be back in Texas, installing them damned irrigation wells. I didn't like that when I was sixteen. And I know I wouldn't like it when I'm eighty.
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I used to help my granddaddy make sausage. He would mix it up in a cleaned-out washtub with his hands, no gloves. Man, if we did anything like that today, they would jack the jail up and throw us under it.
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God is bigger than people think.
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Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.
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My favorite song? 'Amazing Grace.' Anybody singing it. But the best it'll ever be done is by the Scottish National Pipe band and their National Orchestra. It'll bring tears to your eyes.
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Love is an ice cream sundae, with all the marvelous coverings. Sex is the cherry on top.
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Nobody, man or woman, has ever wrecked a good marriage.
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Do what you say you're going to do. And try to do it a little better than you said you would.
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You know you're getting old when you go to more funerals than you do weddings.
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I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
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I've seen so many people in this business that made a fortune. They get old and broke and can't make any money. I tell you something... no one's going to play a benefit for Jimmy Dean.