I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.

A weed is a plant out of place.

You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators.

You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.

If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we’ve got the least excuse for it.

Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow.

Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.