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We live, so to speak, in a seething cauldron of possibilities, continually threatened by confusion, but always ready in spite of everything to rise up again. We must always be ready to elicit those ideas which bring forth what is real to us: that is, our humanity.

Caring, as often as not, is coping with being landed with, being stuck with, having no choice about. How seldom is it gladly or willingly undertaken? Caring all too often is grudging. Nor is it, as the word implies, a gentle business.

The legacy is expressly declared to have been left to him, on the understanding that he applies it to certain stated objects—and those objects have failed. What is to be done with the money? It was not left to the admiral himself, on the testator’s own showing; and the purposes for which it was left have not been, and cannot be, carried out.

There are now two journeys before me to choose between. If I can marry him—the journey to the church. If the profanation of myself is more than I can bear—the journey to the grave!

One of the forces in this world which no middle-aged woman is capable of estimating at its full value, when it acts against her, is the force of beauty in a woman younger than herself.

No, Miss Garth, we must look facts as they are resolutely in the face. Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children; and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.

Some of you write me flattering letters and I'm grateful, but one last request: if you rite me, please don't say, "This is the first time I've ever written a fan letter." Don't say it, even if it's true. You make me feel as if I were taking your virginity -- and it's just too sordid.

When, in the last scene of THE GOLDEN COACH, one of the most exquisitely conceived moments on film, the final curtain is down, and [Anna] Magnani as the actress stands alone on stage, bereft of her lovers, listening to the applause that both confirms and destroys the illusion, the depth of her loneliness seems to be the truth and the pity of all roles played.

They were only boys with bad teeth, wives with faces still dented from last night's blows and girls whose hair was set so stiffly it looked metallic. There were only old drooling lushbums with faces like emptied goboons. There was only a long line of faces that had passed straight from the noseless embryo into the running nose of senility.

Tonight, just as the wan winter-evening light fanned out into all the colors of the hustlers' night, God tossed a handful of city rain across the green and red tavern legends like tossing a handful of red and green confetti. Overhead the wavering warning lamps of the El began casting a blood-colored light down the rails to guide the empty cars of evening down all the nameless tunnels of the night.

Those who speed across the sea change their climate, not their temper.

Small children lack linguistic or cultural frames to put around their perceptions. Reality enters them torrentially, without passing through the schematizing filters of words and concepts.

there is much to support the view that it is clothes that
wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or
breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their
liking.

[Eichmann's] role in the Final Solution, it now turned out, had been wildly exaggerated because he was the one German official who was an "expert in Jewish affairs" and nothing else.

To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter in the whole dark story.

The longer one listened to [Eichmann], the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.

—You can't draw a straight line in a curved space. You can't lead a roper life in a society which isn't proper. Whichever way you turn, you're always caught. Still another illusion that has to be gotten rid of. No personal salvation possible.
—Then what's left to us?
—Not very much, I'm afraid.

How strangely all of them read! I suppose that instead of following the road laid out for them, most of them go wandering blindly through the pages; from time to time a word strikes a chord with them, awakening God only knows what memories or what longings. Or else they think they see a reflection of themselves in some image or other. It would be a lot better never to see your readers face to face.

How can anyone love an intellectual! You have a set of scales where your heart should be and a little brain at the tip of your pecker. And fundamentally you're all just a bunch of fascists.

My face still seems smooth and firm, but overnight the mask will melt, laying bare the rheumy eyes of an old woman. Each year the seasons repeat themselves; wounds are healed. But there's no way in the world to halt the infirmities of age. "There isn't even any time left to worry about it," I thought, turning away from my reflection. "It's even too late for regrets. There's nothing left to do but to keep going."

Eh, gentlemen, let's make allowance for events! Life is a chaplet of little miseries, and the philosopher tells it over with a laugh. Be philosophers like me, gentlemen. Sit down and let's drink. The future never looks so rosy as when it's viewed through a glass of chambertin.

The fault, if fault there was, had been in the teaching under which had lived both Mrs. Prime and her mother. In their desire to live in accordance with that teaching, they had agreed to regard all the outer world, that is all the world except their world, as wicked and dangerous.