Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.

. . . this rage - I have never forgotten it - contained every anger, every revolt I had ever felt in my life - the way I felt when I saw the black dog hunted, the way I felt when I watched old Uncle Henry taken away to the almshouse, the way I felt whenever I had seen people or animals hurt for the pleasure or profit of others.

The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had roughened the husk.

... to be "literary" appeared to my deluded innocence as an unending romance.

The surest way of winning love is to look as if you didn't need it.

Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.

It is only in the heart that anything really happens.