We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.

most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?