Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.

You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

There's an awful lot of inactive kindness which is nothing but laziness, not wanting any trouble, confusion, or effort.

It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.

Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?

One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.