“All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims– and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.”

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true.”

“I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or--the color work in a ten-cent magazine.”

“Sometimes I ask God what I did to deserve her love. I maintain my innocence, and of all the forms of God’s wrath from plagues, pestilence, and famine, her love is by far the cruelest.”

“A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence.”

“In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.”