The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

Passion alone could destroy passion. All the thinking in the world could not make so much as a dent in its surface.

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

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.

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

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