“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end...”

“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religio...”

“A war doesnt merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty ...”

“The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an in...”

“But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.”

“Sometimes Edith came into the room and sat on the bed beside him and they talked. They talked of trivial things of people they knew casually, of a new building going up on the campus, of an old on...”

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

“All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings theres too much corruption in the world ”

“Its only when youre at the bottom of the ladder that you ascend.”