Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.

The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.

A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory

There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.

Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.