When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.

There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur; we hold fast to it.

So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.

...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, That is all there was! But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.

There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.