a self-made martyr is a poor thing.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.

[Reformers] might be classified as a distinct species having eyes in the back of their heads.

Surely the novel should be a form of art - but art was not enough. It must contain not only the perfection of art, but the imperfection of nature.

Evidently, whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation of spirit.

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