Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.
Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
I know you're a fool, Jim Hardy, but for heaven's sake pretend you're not for five minutes.
Oh, as Dean says, nobody is free - never, except just for a few brief moments now and then, when the flash comes, or when as on my haystack night, the soul slips over into eternity for a little space. All the rest of our years we are slaves to someth...
No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.
Cousin Jimmy thinks I did perfectly right. Cousin Jimmy would think I had done perfectly right if I had murdered Andrew and buried him in the Land of Uprightness. It's very nice to have one friend like that, though too many wouldn't be good for you.
Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.
I hate to go mincing through life, afraid to take a single long step for fear somebody is watching. I want to "wave my wild tail and walk by my wild lone." There wasn't a bit of real harm in my opening that window and talking to Perry. There wasn't e...
There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)
Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)
Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarreling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away.
Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness.
I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden--very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain--full of balsam and tang--I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despa...
My pen shall heal, not hurt.
A woman who has a sense of humor possesses no refuge from the merciless truth about herself. She cannot think herself misunderstood. She cannot revel in self-pity. She cannot comfortably damn any one who differs from her.
Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, bu...
[Ilse] was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.
Jimmy Murray, you are an ass,' said Aunt Ruth, angrily. 'Well, we're cousins,' agreed Cousin Jimmy pleasantly.
