“He suddenly saw the enterprise of literature as essentially mad.”

“Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.”

“Destroying oneself, he thought ruefully, should always be done at a deliberate pace.”

“I have been considering the possibility that the facts that can be ascertained about this cheese fail to satisfy because the facts themselves mask a metaphysical truth that can be known only throug...”

“Original sin is a very commercial idea,” said Duyckinck. “How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?”

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not de...”

“My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am, and that's good to keep in mind.”

“When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)”

“Satans inquisitiveness would eventually be inherited by the offspring of Adam and Eve. The inquisitiveness was the original sin.”

“One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ...”

“A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes that men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple founda...”