I never knew how soothing trees are-many trees and patches of open sunlight, and tree presences; it is almost like having another being.

Men! The only animal in the world to fear.

Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.

They were evidently small men, all wind and quibbles, flinging out their chuffy grain to us with far less interest than a farm-wife feels as she scatters corn to her fowls.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.

The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot. In their myths there is no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge, grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their existence, and men grudging the animals. The goddess of love is goddess of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater, a horror, without a touch of tenderness.

If only we could live two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, and the second in which to profit by them.