They go in [to the library] not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.

It will be a shock to men when they realize that thoughts that were fast enough for today are not fast enough for tomorrow. But thinking tomorrow's thoughts today is one kind of future life.

Perhaps this is an age when men think bravely of the human spirit; for surely they have a strange lust to lay it bare.

New York is Babylon : Brooklyn is the truly Holy City. New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle; Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness.... There is no hope for New Yorkers, for their glory in Their skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly.

A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.

America is still a government of the naive, for the naive, and by the naive. He who does not know this, nor relish it, has no inkling of the nature of his country.

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.