History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," would be unheard echoes on an empty air.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.