There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

Be not another if thou canst be thyself.

Fanaticism is ... compensation for doubt

How much more complicated life is than the attainment of a Ph.D. would lead one to believe!

Subtle wits like to refresh themselves with a whiff of mild indecency.

Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man.

The recognition of oneself as a part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost.

..but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.

The house stank; a stench all its own pervaded every corner. It was a threnody in the key of Cat minor, with a ground-bass of Old Dog, and modulations of old people, waning lives, and relinquished hopes.

What had Pledger-Brown said? "Too bad, Davey; he wanted blood and all we could offer was guts.

Having me in the dining-room was almost the equivalent of having a Raeburn on the walls; I was classy, I was heavily varnished, and I offended nobody.

To know all is to despise all.

...the irrational will have its say, perhaps because 'irrational' is the wrong word for it.

But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

Any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experiences the fire.

How they chirped over their cups.

You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing.

If you are determined on the religious life, you have to toughen up your mind. You have to let it be a thouroughfare for all thoughts, and among them you must make choices.

But what I knew then was that nobody-not even my mother-was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself in the surface.

Geordie wrote a letter to Mr. Webster in which the shrieking figure of Apology was hounded through a labyrinth of agonized syntax.

Nobody ever reads the same book twice.

Sometimes fear could be forgotten, but never for long.

Men have this climacteric, you know, like women. Doctors deny it, but I have met some very menopausal persons in their profession.

I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe the tear from every eye.

...so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.

I learned later that the former operator of Abdullah had been a dwarf who cannot have been fastidious about his person, and there was a strong whiff of hot dwarf as I grew hotter myself.

Wisdom may be rented...on the experience of other people, but we buy it at an inordinate price before we make it our own forever.

He became an unimaginative woman's creation. Delilah had shorn his locks and assured him he looked much neater and cooler without them. He gave her his soul, and she transformed it into a cabbage.

He gave me this advice one time: Never marry your childhood sweetheart, he said; the reasons that make you choose her will all turn into reasons why you should have rejected her.

And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.

Myself: But wasn't the decision a right one? Am I not here? What more could Feeling have achieved than was brought about by Reason?

Are you New World or Old?' 'Sounds like a novel by Henry James.' 'Never read him.' 'Don't. But that was his question and he plumped for the Old.

Of course some of us had some geography in school and had studied maps, but a school map is a terribly uncommunicative thing.

They were anxious to make men of us, by which they meant making us like themselves.