The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature and in the touch of humanity. The cruelty of children . . . the blindness of the unpitiful - these were my terrors. But not the crash of thunder overhead, not the bolts of fire from the clouds.

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

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

Women are one of the Almighty's enigmas to prove to men that He knows more than they do.

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.

A doctrine of endurance flows easily from our lips when we are enduring jam and our neighbors dry bread, and it is still possible for us to become resigned to the afflictions of our brother.

Nobody, not even the old, not even the despairing, wished to come to an end in time or in eternity.