Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.

Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.

Life is not worth living for which a man is not prepared to die at any moment.

Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.

I do not know any way to explain why God's grace touches a man who seems unworthy of it.

In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.

[It is b]etter to die on the losing side than to live under communisim.