A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry or animal behaviour.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

The flowers never waste their sweetness on the desert air or, for that matter, on the jungle air. In fact, they waste it only when nobody except a human being is there to smell it. It is for the bugs and a few birds, not for men, that they dye their petals or waft their scents.

A book ... unlike a television program, moving picture or any other 'modern means of communication' ... can wait for years, yet be available at any moment when it happens to be needed.

Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.

How anyone can profess to find animal life interesting and yet take delight in reducing the wonder of any animal to a bloody mass of fur or feathers?