We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.

There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.

I would rather take hellebore than spend a conversation with a good, little man.

One of the weaknesses in the cooperative is that it has never been sufficiently leavened by the imagination. This is a quick-silver faculty, and likely to be a cause of worry to any collective settlement.

Every decision you make is a mistake.

Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.