There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive—yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk—the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable.

It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.

Why should I? I've done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed - I am only beaten

And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.

Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

The clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.