In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.
Joseph Wood KrutchThe typical American believes that no necessity of the soul is free and that there are precious few, if any, which cannot be bought.
Joseph Wood KrutchFebruary... Now more than ever one must remind oneself that it is wasteful folly to wish that time would pass, or - as the puritanical old saying used to have it - to kill time until it kills you.
Joseph Wood KrutchThere is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.
Joseph Wood KrutchIs it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?
Joseph Wood Krutch