Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject.

People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning.

God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

Thus, I always began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant, of course, I was to die. Sooner than others, obviously. 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten-- since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.

It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.