Chester A. Arthur Quotes

The presidency awed me, but presidents do not. Perhaps I have always expected too much of them, but I believe that when they reach the highest office in the land, they should live up to the greatest honor that can come to a person in American political life. Some have stood the test better than others.

Pretty much every weekend, my wife and I have the shall-we-live-in-the-country conversation. I suppose it's something to do with getting older and feeling I want to shed some of the things I've been doing for the last 20 years and go back to my roots.

I like my job. The burdens of this great nation I have borne up under for the past seven years will not be laid aside with relief, as all presidents have heretofore said, but will be laid aside with a good deal of regret, for I have enjoyed every moment of this so-called arduous and exacting task.

His Presidency gave his post-Presidency credibility.

When you leave the White House, you wonder if you’ll ever draw a crowd again.

I can't deny I'm a better ex-president than I was a president.

Any man who has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the American people.

It is a national disgrace that after having occupied the highest position in the country, that our presidents should be cast adrift, and perhaps be compelled to keep a corner grocery for substance.

Oh, what a lovely title, ex-president

I don't know exactly what are you supposed to do when you retire. Lie on the couch and do nothing? I didn't want to do that.

Long after Donald Trump is no longer President Trump, I know there will still be a relationship there.

George H. W. Bush. He's been a classy guy in his post-presidency.

Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.

The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower

Hey, if I don't have a job, I don't know why I bother to get up. Any time the phone rings, I'm ready to go. What else am I going to do? See, I've never retired. I don't even know what it means.

It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can't go and say, 'I'm retired now. That's it!' It won't take long and you're really gone for good and someone throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it. That's the moment you're really retiring - when you die.

Honestly, I think if I had to stop acting I'd be like, 'Well, I guess I have to go live in the mountains now.' I'd probably be a good assistant.

A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.

For work, I have to be living in cities, I really cherish the time when I get to be out in the countryside.

A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn't go.

When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.

GOING TO WALDEN It isn't very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

The country has gone sane and got back to horses.

I've got to make a new life for myself, I'm out to learn how to enjoy my leisure now that I'm retired. I've been doing things people expected of me always. I want to feel free. I want to sit under a linden tree with nothing more important to worry about than the temperature of the beer, if there is anything more important.