The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.

The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations.

Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.

The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.

How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures, the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar through the fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas.

For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!