Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself

All birth is unwilling.

There is, of course, a difference between what one seizes and what one really possesses.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection.

If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born myself...a human being.