Burl Ives Quotes

“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 center. The birds were singing. It was spring.”

— 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 east.”

— 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 Franklin had walked.

— Burl Ives

“I stopped and gazed on the little dull man who was being paid to be a teacher of teachers. I turned and walked to the door, slammed it closed with a bang, and broken glass crashed to the floor. There was uproar behind me in the class, which did not interest me at all.”

— 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 because of some crazy hope that one of the things he buys will be life everlasting.

— Burl Ives

“When you've set goals and dreams, you don't feel old.”

— Burl Ives

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

— 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 is what's important.

— Burl Ives

Have a holly jolly Christmas!

— 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 was some Big Daddy in me, just lyin' dormant. And out it came. People still do call me Big Daddy, but to me, inside, I'm no Big Daddy at all.”

— Burl Ives