To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards