“There are those who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life is an extravagance”

“Here then is an infallible criterion, by which the nation may judge of the intentions of those who govern it ... if they corrupt the morals of the people, spread a taste for luxury, effeminacy, a rage for licentious pleasures, - if they stimulate the higher orders to a ruinous pomp and extravagance, - beware, citizens! beware of those corruptors! they only aim at purchasing slaves in order to exercise over them an arbitrary sway.”

“But in my book, it was basically bad taste to stare at someone's assets, no matter how much on display they were.”

“Accepting the world’s realities, even when you didn’t understand them, was a basic necessity of existence in Ozark life.”

“To live intensely is a basic human necessity.”

“There is no necessity for pain-why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?”