The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.

An absolute condition of all successful living, whether for an individual or a nation, is the acceptance of death.

I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

There is generosity in giving, but gentleness in receiving.

The only thing for a pacifist to do is to find a substitute for war.

Whatever the advantages of the machine may be - and they are many - the very ease of its use is bound to make away with intimacy - the intercourse of human beings, of animals, or of that which we still think of as the natural world.

... I cannot think a civilization worth having that does not encourage and enable its subjects to spend something, not extorted by governments but freely given to keep wretchedness at least from the streets they walk through day by day.