The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.

It is not a sentimental, but a grimly literal fact that unless we share this terrestrial globe with creatures other than ourselves, we shall not be able to live on it for long.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

Though we face the facts of sex we are more reluctant than ever to face the fact of death or the crueler facts of life, either biological or social.

Is 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?

Man is, perhaps, no more prone to war than he used to be and no more inclined to commit other evil deeds. But a given amount of ill will or folly will go further than it used to.

Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.