Top 100 Merle Quotes
#1. If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination.
David Allan Coe
#2. I think my brand of country music is that's been influenced by not just the rough-stock rodeo side or Ted Nugent's "let's get crazy style", but also the stand-up and sing style's like George Strait and Merle Haggard, and also the wild side of Chris Ledoux
Cody Johnson
#3. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams ... all of them are different styles, but those are the songs that make the times ... they're the songs that last through time.
Dolly Parton
#4. We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that makes our lives. One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment. MERLE SHAIN
Julia Cameron
#5. And I think it's safe to say that the single very impressive figure to me was Merle Haggard.
Warren Zevon
#6. We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.
Tennessee Ernie Ford
#7. It's cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn't sound too bad.
Trisha Yearwood
#8. Madame Merle had once said that, in her belief, when a friendship ceased to grow, it immediately began to decline - there was no point of equilibrium between liking a person more and liking him less.
Henry James
#9. Merle Weaver stroked the little girl's hair and thought of the two corpses in the rear of the truck.
Michael McDowell
#10. I went to Brooklyn College and met this beautiful Jewish girl named Merle, with dark hair, exotic looking and brilliant. So we got married and had three children.
Dominic Chianese
#11. There's just enough drinking and cheating songs around without me adding to them. Unless you've got something better than "Misery and Gin" by Merle Haggard, you're beating a dead horse.
Aaron Watson
#12. My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though!
Loudon Wainwright III
#13. Let us reject this decree. In matters of conscience the majority has no power.
Merle d'Aubigne, History of the Reformation, b. 13, ch. 5.
Ellen G. White
#14. I really like Alan Jackson, in Country Music. I think he's really very, very talented along with George Jones, and Merle Haggard, the same old favorites.
Tanya Tucker
#15. In the 80s, in the cover band I was in, we'd slip in original material. If you didn't say anything about it, people just didn't care. Sometimes they'd ask where that came from and you'd tell them, but you still had to play a bunch of Willie, Waylon, and Merle.
Andy Wilkinson
#16. Miguel: Merle? What kind of hick name is that? I wouldn't name my dog Merle.
The Walking Dead
#17. The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs - not just covers - but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top or Merle Haggard.
Randy Owen
#18. Memo to Merle Haggard: Miracles really do happen. I
Rachel Cohn
#19. You mean how do I know you are who you say you are?" Merle shrugged. "How do you know anybody is who they say they are?" She shook her head. "We lie to ourselves about who we see, we lie to ourselves about who we are. Then we buy our own lies and try to spend them as our lives.
James Grady
#20. I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.
Jewel
#21. Daryl Dixon: [about Merle] Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails.
The Walking Dead
#22. I listen more to music when I'm on my computer. I'm into the latest YouTube thing. I'm a nanosecond kind of listener, but if I'm driving I would be listening to a Merle Haggard box set. It's a weird experience listening to 'Working Man Blues' by Merle Haggard and cruising around in a Porsche.
Jason McCoy
#23. Madame Merle was very appreciative; she liked almost everything, including the English rain. "There is always a little of it, and never too much at once," she said; "and it never wets you, and it always smells good.
Henry James
#24. I listen to Lil Wayne, and then I listen to Merle Haggard.
Tyler Farr
#25. I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.
Iris Dement
#26. My all-time favorite rock and roll players were Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry and Franny Beecher, and I listened to the country playing of Merle Travis.
Alvin Lee
#27. When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.
Doc Watson
#28. The song is "Always Wanting You," a favorite of Dad's, where cynical, heartsick Merle croon about always wanting but never having his love, and about how hard it will be to face tomorrow cuz he knows he'll just be wanting her again. Doomed.
Rachel Cohn
#29. Around 14, I was turned on to Shania, Reba, Merle Haggard, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood ... and I've followed it ever since.
Laura Bell Bundy
#30. I heard that "discretion is the better part of valor" from someone. Dunno exactly what that means but if it means not gettin' my fool haed blowed off then I'm all for it. -- Merle Johnson (Chicago Chase)
R.L. Kiser
#31. I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
Jake Owen
#32. God bless Merle Haggard. He did all the things that Johnny Cash was supposed to have done.
Lewis Grizzard
#33. I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase ... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.
Brad Paisley
#34. Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always Spring.
Merle Shain
#35. Compassion is the thing that leads you gently back to yourself.
Merle Shain
#36. Every day we bear witness to each woman's knowledge of holding the profound power to decide whether or not to allow the life within her to come to term. The sharing of those moments makes abortion work sacred.
Merle Hoffman
#37. I like to stretch myself and push the envelope, so anything that's new or different or not of my daily routine, I am so for.
Merle Dandridge
#38. I enjoy the videos with the sound off, where you can look at the belly buttons and everything. Really some pretty girls, but I don't know about the music.
Merle Haggard
#39. I had some surgery on my feet, which has helped my back some.
Merle Haggard
#40. I have known the fruits of strikes. The bitter and the sweet. Hunger and music.
Merle Travis
#41. The Board would like to come back and see you tomorrow, Ariana,' she mimicked. 'Any more questions?'
'Yes,' she answered in the Warden's Irish accent, 'I'd just like to know why I'm such an arsehole.
Claire Merle
#42. It was like a curse. He was her antidote. She was his poison.
Claire Merle
#43. But who would rush at a benighted man, and give him two black eyes for being blind?
Merle Shain
#44. If I hear another line dance song I think I'm going to puke.
Merle Haggard
#45. When you get to readin' about where the music and John Steinbeck and all those people like that come from, the further you go the more interesting it becomes.
Merle Haggard
#46. There are no perfect men of course, but some are more perfect than others, and we can use all of those we can get.
Merle Shain
#47. Everybody likes Johnny Cash. I think the sad part of it is his health is givin' him problems.
Merle Haggard
#48. It takes a lot of mulch, love does, to create a froth.
Merle Shain
#49. Back when the country was strong, back before Elvis and before the Vietnam war came along.
Merle Haggard
#50. Love is short, forgetting is long, and understanding longer still.
Merle Shain
#51. It takes great generosity to accept generosity.
Merle Shain
#52. I'll tell you this, though. It's not true, that saying about sticks and stones; it's words that break your bones.
Merle Miller
#53. Willie Nelson's the one who told me the reason it costs so much to get divorced is because it's worth it.
Merle Haggard
#54. I wish coke was still cola and a joint was a bad place to be.
Merle Haggard
#55. Hey, hey, the working man, the working man like me. I ain't never been on welfare, that's one place I won't be.
Merle Haggard
#56. There's one thing I never did do, and that was stink.
Merle Haggard
#58. Guitar playing is very important to me. It's like golf to some other people; it's important to me that I play good.
Merle Haggard
#59. Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.
Merle Shain
#60. In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available ... in America right now.
Merle Haggard
#61. Staring at the world through the bottom of a glass, all I see is a man who's fading fast.
Merle Haggard
#62. You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Merle Travis
#63. If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained.
Merle Shain
#64. They shaved a little piece of bone off my small toe. You see, you balance yourself a certain way and this toe had grown under the other ones. So he cut it loose, where I could balance myself and it makes me walk straight.
Merle Haggard
#65. I think it was Tommy who told me, 'When your song is called 'XYZ' or whatever, every line has got to make sense against your title.' He showed me little methods of proving to yourself whether the line belongs, and ways of finding out whether you were able to get more out of a line if you tried.
Merle Haggard
#66. Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can be different from being what you'd like them to be, although often they turn out the same
Merle Shain
#67. And then, of course, there's a couple that claim to be, but I haven't done any DNA tests or anything.
Merle Haggard
#68. At my age, I don't buy but a half a loaf of bread, you know?
Merle Haggard
#69. 'Cause I was already a smoker, it was easy to get addicted. The one thing that they don't teach you about marijuana is how addictive it is.
Merle Haggard
#70. How can anyone prove they're not insane to people that are?
Claire Merle
#71. Some men are more perfect than others.
Merle Shain
#72. To be part of what you're singing about is somewhat painful. You've got to climb inside it all.
Merle Haggard
#73. Faith is the only way we're going to make it. None of us are smart enough to do it on our own.
Merle Haggard
#74. Momma tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied, and that leaves only me to blame, cause Momma tried.
Merle Haggard
#76. The saddest songs are written when a person is happy.
Merle Travis
#78. We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope.
Merle Haggard
#79. One can't run in a park without a dog or make angels in the snow without a child and there are things one can't do without a lover, so the loss of the lover is like an amputation and the patient goes into shock.
Merle Shain
#80. The answer doesn't lie in learning how to protect ourselves from life-it lies in learning how to become strong enough to let a bit more of it in.
Merle Shain
#81. Who ask
don't get
who don't ask
don't want
who don't want
don't get
who don't get
don't care
Merle Hodge
#82. Well, I'm kinda like George Carlin. I think that there ought to be a time where everybody should have all the drugs they want and there'd be nobody in charge, sort of like ... now!
Merle Haggard
#83. The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that no one is cheated in this world, unless it's by himself.
Merle Shain
#84. And there's some Latino music I like, and some reggae music.
Merle Haggard
#85. Our strength is in our dreams, and those who do not dare to dream damn themselves.
Merle Shain
#86. A pervasive sense of shame is the ongoing premise that one is fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being.
Merle Fossum
#87. Marriage is supposed to do everything, like Duz, which is more than half its problem. It is said to save us, define us, give us purpose, keep us from loneliness, and incidentally balance our diet and wash our socks, and when it doesn't, we get divorced.
Merle Shain
#88. Feelings take you into uncharted territory from time to time it's true, but you almost always benefit from the journey one way or the other. We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that marks our lives.
Merle Shain
#89. The act of choosing whether or not to have a child is often an act of love, and always an act of survival.
Merle Hoffman
#90. The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving.
Merle Shain
#91. There were two choices in life. Survive or succumb. And most people weren't even conscious of the path they chose. Because they chose for all the wrong reasons. Love, principles, dreams, desire. The world hadn't changed. It had always been survival of the fittest.
Claire Merle
#92. Most women would rather have someone whisper their name at optimum moments than rocket with contractions to the moon.
Merle Shain
#93. Diana Krall knocks me out. I like jazz and I like her simple approach.
Merle Haggard
#94. There's two kind of cherries, and two kind of fairies, and two kind of mothers I'm told.
Merle Haggard
#95. My 10 year old son likes it. He's trying to play guitar and everything. He likes that kind of music.
Merle Haggard
#96. 95% of the album is my writing, by choice, because it seems to be what the distributors want.
Merle Haggard
#97. I worked really hard in college, and I came out a completely different person and performer than when I went in. I did the work, and I found a craft.
Merle Dandridge
#98. It's easier to force feed people than it is to give 'em what they want. It makes more money.
Merle Haggard
#99. A great man may be the personification and type of the epoch for which God destines him, but he is never its creator.
Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne
#100. We marry to grow up, to escape our parents and to inherit our share of the world, not knowing who we are and who we will become, so it is left to marriage to make it clear which ones of us are growing in the same directions and which are ships meant to have passed in the night.
Merle Shain
