Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.

For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.

I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...