“Candid, and generous, and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust,
An error soon corrected—
For who but learns in riper years
That man, when smoothest he appears
Is most to be suspected?”

Loves Me Like a Rock
Song lyrics, There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973)

Preface to Oxford Poetry for 1914 http://books.google.com/books?id=rRcGYxSyobsC&q=%22God's+most+candid+critics+are+those+of+his+children+whom+he+has+made+poets%22&pg=PAvii#v=onepage and 1914–1916 http://books.google.com/books?id=W5iRAAAAIAAJ&q=%22God's+most+candid+critics+are+those+of+his+children+whom+he+has+made+poets%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage.

Chap. 11, "The Fat Man"
Dialogue between the characters Kasper Gutman (the "fat man") and Sam Spade.
Source: The Maltese Falcon (1930)
Context: "We begin well, sir," the fat man purred … "I distrust a man that says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink too much it's because he's not to be trusted when he does. … Well, sir, here's to plain speaking and clear understanding. … You're a close-mouthed man?"
Spade shook his head. "I like to talk."
"Better and better!" the fat man exclaimed. "I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice."

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: The idea of being constructive, creative, positive, in trying to bring out the best in one's own self and the best in others follows from what I've just been saying. Again, I repeat my belief in us, in ourselves, as the product of the process of evolution, and part of the process itself. I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. It's the need to dedicate one's self in that way, to one's own self, and to choose an activity or life that is of value not only to yourself but to others as well.

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter X: The Leech and His Patient

Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Miss Mackenzie (1865), Ch. 17

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 31