The eighteen years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another.

A man needs a purpose for real health.

The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.

There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves.

What is to be got at to make the air sweet, the ground good under the feet, can only be got at by failure, trial, again and again and again failure.

If I can write everything out plainly, perhaps I will myself understand better what has happened.

As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.