Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.