“The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family.”

“I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.”

“...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.”

“What did I expect of him? Very little, I promise you. One more dented little face. One more adolescent freak. The usual unusual. One great thing about being in the adjustment business: you're never short of customers.”

“Let others probe the mystery if they can. Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will- The right thing happens to the happy man. The bird flies out, the bird flies back again; The hill becomes the valley, and is still; Let others delve that mystery if they can. God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one The small become the great, the great the small; The right thing happens to the happy man. Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun, His being single, and that being all: The right thing happens to the happy man. Or he sits still, a solid figure when The self-destructive shake the common wall; Takes to himself what mystery he can, And, praising change as the slow night comes on, Wills what he would, surrendering his will Till mystery is no more: No more he can. The right thing happens to the happy man.”

“The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.”