The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

And we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.

Sticking to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as having seen one woman.