An Inland Voyage (1878).
2000s, 2000, A Truly Great America (2000)
“Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.”
As quoted in Sketchbook 1966-1971 (1971) by Max Frisch, p. 230
1970s
“And it was grief that made Mankind your lover,
And it was grief that made you love Mankind.”
Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory
Context: Your eyes, that looked on glory, could discover
The angry scar to which the world was blind:
And it was grief that made Mankind your lover,
And it was grief that made you love Mankind.
“Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors.”
Of Atheism
A short Schem of the true Religion
Context: Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowels) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders & two leggs on the hipps one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to believe that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared.
Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past.
O, Porcupine.
Brother, Sister (2006)
Part One, Chapter 5
Four Freedoms (2009)
Comedy of Monsieur Thomas (c. 1610–16; published 1639), Act III, scene 1.
On inspiring others to public service, as quoted in "John Glenn had the stuff U.S. heroes are made of http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/02/20/loc_john_glenn_had_stuff.html" by Howard Wilkinson, in The Cincinnati Enquirer (20 February 2002).
