“The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.”

“Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him.”

“A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off”

“As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief... without moral purpose or human interest.”

“How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.”

“The only thing about a man that is a man . . . is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.”

“. . . At Ghent the wind rose.There was a smell of rain and a heavy dragOf wind in the hedges but not as the wind blowsOver fresh water when the waves lagFoaming and the willows huddle and it will rain . . .”