Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.

For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.

To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tanatmount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth.

On the whole, however, it is only out of pride or gross ignorance, or cowardice, that we refuse to see in the present the lineaments of times to come.

But happiness is brittle, and if men and circumstances don't destroy it, it is threatened by ghosts.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.