Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion.

It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.

Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.

Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.

He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die. He's going to die anyway. He's so scared, Papa. The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared. The boy didn't answer. He just sat there with his head down, sobbing. You're not the one who has to worry about everything. The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? He said. He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.