The whole object of education is...to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that works.

In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.

From the place by the railing at the edge of the tracks on the summer evening I return across the city to my own room. I am vividly aware of my own life that escaped the winter on the boat. How many such lives I have lived. Then I only made a dollar and a half a day and now I sometimes make more than that in a few minutes. How wonderful to be able to write words. ... Again I begin the endless game of reconstructing my own life, jerking it out of the shell that dies, striving to breathe into it beauty and meaning. ... I wonder why my life, why all lives, are not more beautiful.

It was a cold day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and hills.

Many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg.

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

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.