He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it, that counted - and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

I liked human beings, but I did not love human nature.

After a day of rain the sun came out suddenly at five o'clock and threw a golden bar into the deep Victorian gloom of the front parlour

Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.

Borrowed illusions are better than none.

I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.