Human beings are mercifully so constituted as to be able to conceal from themselves what they intend to do until they are well into the doing of it.

There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized upon by a madness which forced them to commit the very acts which make it certain that what they dread will happen.

It seemed a good idea at the time.

No great thing happens suddenly.

To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere.