“New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.”

“The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. . . . New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.”

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.”

“I wasn't certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.”

“People can only grow, stagnate, or regress. Which one are you doing? I’m both growing and stagnating, because I’m learning every day, so I’m growing, but since learning has become a habit and I do it all the time, I’m technically stagnating. I’m stagnating upwards.”

“endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.”