“Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.”

“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”

“I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it.”

“The most painful and jealously guarded secrets are perhaps the ones that everyone around us knows. Stupid tragedies. Useless tears.”

“I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come.”

“Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?”