Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.

You can't wish a body any worse luck than to get what he wants.

Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.

the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

I'm as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.

don't let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you know that - and it's true.