“The unalterable character with which Schopenhauer and sometimes Conrad believed all humans are born may not exist; but we cannot help looking within ourselves to account for what we do. All we find are fragments, like memories of a novel we once read.”

“We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

“Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born at once one is guilty.”

“We can't have full knowledge all at once. We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for ourselves.”

“Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavailing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will not, help ourselves; that often just then something comes, almost as if supernaturally, to settle for us, as if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, and then at last obtained leave to help us? And if it be so, then what might only be a coincidence becomes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a command.”

“If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.”

“Sometimes we find it hardest to accept in others that which we cling to in ourselves.”

“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”

“We cannot make over the people of Europe. We must help them as they are, if we are to help them at all. I believe that we should help, not at the sacrifice of our independence, not for the support of imperialism, but to restore to those great peoples a peaceful civilization. In that course lies the best guarantee of freedom. In that course lies the greatest honor which we can bestow upon the memory of Lafayette.”