But, of course only morons would ever think or speak of themselves as intellectuals. That's why they all look so sad.

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.

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'.

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.

A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it.

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

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!