There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.
I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.
Beaucoup d'hommes ont un orgueil qui les pousse a' cacher leurs combats et a' ne se montrer que victorieux. Many men have pride that causes them to hide their combats and to only show themselves victorious.
Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.
Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself.
We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?