While the right friends are near us, we feel that all is well. Our everyday life blossoms suddenly into bright possibilities.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.

I believe there are angels among us, sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hours, to show us how to live, to teach us how to give, to guide us with a light of love.

Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.