Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it.

It is impossible, except for theologians, to conceive of a world-wide scandal or a universe-wide scandal; the proof of this is the way people have settled down to living with nuclear fission, radiation poisoning, hydrogen bombs, satellites, and space rockets.

The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.

The happy ending is our national belief.