“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodat...”

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire t...”

“Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpe...”

“This is what youth must figure out:Girls, love, and living.The having, the not having,The spending and giving,And the meloncholy time of not knowing.This is what age must learn about:The ABC of dyi...”

“They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they'd hang head-down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something goo...”

“Your life experience is a moving picture, of which you are writer, director, performer, producer and critic.”

“I dont want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.”

“What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great liter...”

“When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.”

“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”

“All of us lived life when sex was the farthest thing from our minds. Try to remember the careless freedom of play, basking in the beingness of others. As adults, responsibilities and obligations ca...”