“By solemn vision and bright silver dreamHis infancy was nurtured. Every sightAnd sound from the vast earth and ambient airSent to his heart its choicest impulses.”

“Earth and fire and water and airWe solemnly promise, we solemnly swearNot a word, not a hint, not a sound to declareEarth and fire and water and air!”

“We all nurture impulses which promise freedom from the demands of others, even if that freedom means death.”

“O gentle vision in the dawn:My spirit over faint cool water glides,Child of the day,To thee;And thou art drawnBy kindred impulse over silver tidesThe dreamy wayTo me.”

“To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.”

“Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But not for the first time, such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than life itself - clothes upon the body of his son.”