I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization -- that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls.

The things that we have and that we think are so solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into, nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever.

Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium.

This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime - he never knows. And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable.

Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth either.

So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some.

No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart.