When an individual fear or apathy would cause us to pass by the unfortunate, then life is of no account.

I do not believe that we can stop perfecting new ways of dying until we have found new ways of living. Every new life-way ought to prevent a new death-way.

When I meet a new person, I am on the lookout for signs of what he or she is loyal to. It is a preliminary clue to the sense of belonging, and hence of his or her humanity.

Certainly there are great men whose age circumscribes them so completely that we lose interest.

The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure.

The moment one accosts a stranger or is accosted by him is above all in this life the moment of drama... Whoever we meet watches us intently at the quick, strange moment of meeting, to see whether we are disposed to be friendly.

And who is any of us, that without starvation he can go through the kingdoms of starvation?