Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.

There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

No one asks public men to be strictly moral, but they must seem to be well-behaved.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.