“It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?”
“All errors are just ordinary, what extraordinary sin can you commit? All the sins have been committed already. You cannot find a new sin - it is very difficult, it is almost impossible to be original about sin. For millions of years people have committed everything that can be committed. To be thrown in hell for your sins. Now this is too much! you can throw a man into hell for five years, ten years, twenty years, fifty years. If a man has lived for seventy years you can throw him there for seventy years.and that is if you only believe in one life. It is good that they believe in one life.”
“O friend, for the morrow let us not worryThis moment we have now, let us not hurryWhen our time comes, we shall not tarryWith seven thousand-year-olds, our burden carry”
“I couldn’t have pulled it off if you hadn’t have pulled out all those years ago. So thanks, dad.”
“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”
“If I'd been ten years old again I'd have stuck my tongue out at Caroline. At sixteen, I ought to be above such behavior.I wasn't.”