“We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer… Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.”

“Men will not commonly steal women that are nothing worth.”

“What if this right now is our last time? Our last moment to do something for our families, and our country? Did we live up to the values we say we believe? Did we do all we really could?”

“How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?”

“Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, "It's my own business.”

“It's no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

“Death steals everything except our stories.”

“If we can forgive what's been done to us… If we can forgive what we've done to others… If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.”

“What did you do today? Nothing say our little children, and so do I. What we most are is what we keep mistaking for nothing.”

“It is not our business,” he said, “to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.”