The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.

Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out of them; the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, I made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for every crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent.

Wagner has some great moments, but a lot of miserable half hours.

There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par.

Braveness is resistance to concern, mastery of panic - not absense of anxiety.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.