If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

The typical American believes that no necessity of the soul is free and that there are precious few, if any, which cannot be bought.

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.

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man's existence.

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 mind leaps, and leaps perhaps with a sort of elation, through the immensities of space, but the spirit, frightened and cold, longs to have once more above its head the inverted bowl beyond which may lie whatever paradise its desires may create.