“Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.” — P. T. Barnum Quote

Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.

Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.

No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.

Forty years ago, the players were like a travelling circus - we went everywhere together and were pretty good friends.

I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is prone to that you should necessarily put them in a real working industry at six years old.

I've been a tough sailor, a foppish-type landscape gardener, a French villain, a circus strongman.

If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.