“Evils that befall the world are not nearly so often caused by bad men as they are by good men who are silent when an opinion must be voiced.”

“it wasn't uncommon... that such a girl might die young, but this girl had stayed alive long enough to make her mark, to take up residence in his imagination. to haunt him. now, through her, he mourns and celebrates everything that life has denied him, all the beauty, all the magic. this is how it happens: the dead go away into their solitude, but the young dead stay with us, they color our dreams, they make us wonder about ourselves, that we should be so unlucky, or clumsy, or so downright ordinary as to carry on without them.”

“Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor.”

“The world eats good men for breakfast.”

“When I was up she taught me to recognize the feeling and savor it. “Remember how good you feel now,” she said. “There will be times later on when everything will seem bleak. I don’t want to minimize the grim and harsh times. I know how bad you feel then. But they won’t last forever. Capture the good moments,” she said.”

“Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom.”

“Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.”