Nothing is more consuming, or more illogical, than the desire for remembrance.

Cruelty is the only sin.

One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living.

When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?

I don't like human nature, but I do like human beings.

. . . every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.