once a man had thrust his hands into the soil and knew the grit of it between his teeth, he felt something rise within him that was not of his day or generation, but had persisted through birth and death from a time beyond recall.

There was nothing so real on the prairie as winter, nothing so memorable.

Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

The past ... is a dim avenue down which we may walk and find the diverging paths of terror and beauty and passion.

You have stirred the soil with your plow, my friend. It will never be the same again.

There is too much doing - too little being! When we begin to get strenuous, life begins to grow intolerable.

Growing old was simply a process of drawing closer to that ultimate independence called death.