To be a man requires that you accept everything life has to give you, beginning with your name.

- Burl Ives

I'm a law-abiding man. That is, if there's any law to abide by.

- Burl Ives

I got into a brawl one night in a saloon in Greenwich Village. Elia Kazan, a great director, saw me put out a couple of hecklers and figures there wa…

- Burl Ives

I went to my room and packed a change of clothes, got my banjo, and started walking down the road. Soon I found myself on the open highway headed eas…

- Burl Ives

How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Frankli…

- Burl Ives

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the…

- Burl Ives

Have a holly jolly Christmas!

- Burl Ives

The human animal is a beast that eventually has to die. If he's got money, he buys and he buys and he buys. The reason he buys everything he can is…

- Burl Ives

I think my life has been a long, slow process of trying to move closer and closer to the spirit by moving closer and closer to the heart. The heart i…

- Burl Ives