Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.

I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one to make a living in these times.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.

Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.