“One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about.”

“War is hell, but sometimes in the midst of that hell men do things that heaven itself must be proud of. A hand grenade is hurled into a group of men. One of the men throws himself on top of it, making his body a living shield. In the burst of wild fire he dies, and the others live. Heroism is only a word, often a phony one. This is an action for which there is no good word because we can hardly even imagine it, let alone give it its proper name. Very literally, one man takes death into his bowels, takes fire into his own sweet flesh, so that the other men can take life, some of them men he hardly knows.”

“If you want to change the way that the world appears to be; you must change the way that you see everything in it. And if you want to change the world; you must change the way everyone else sees everything in it. And when everyone else sees everything in the world in a new way, the world will be changed and then mankind will turn their faces to the heavens in search of a brand new vision and then it will be able to see the heavens for what the heavens really are! That being because, in order for a person to change how he sees the world, he must first change the eyes of his soul and it is with those new eyes that man can look at the sun, that man can see the heavens, that man can know God. Then it is with these newfound truths that humanity will continue to live, but living by walking in a new reality.”

“I imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light in which they know themselves altogether for the first time. It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy; by it they are at once condemned and redeemed. It is Hell until it is Heaven. Seeing themselves in that light, if they are willing, they see how far they have failed the only justice of loving one another; it punishes them by their own judgment. And yet, in suffering that light's awful clarity, in seeing themselves in it, they see its forgiveness and its beauty, and are consoled. In it they are loved completely, even as they have been, and so are changed into what they could not have been but what, if they could have imagined it, they would have wished to be.”

“The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

“All men are created equal. Now matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.”