Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.

The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

Ants are a curious race