Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

... the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

How much there was of this woman he did not know!

Now five years is nothing in man's life except when he is very young and very old ...

And to him war was a thing like earth and sky and water and why it was no one knew but only that it was.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.

As I watched her at play ... it came to me that this child would pass life as the angels live in Heaven. The difficulties of existence would never be hers.