“I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.”

“It seemed a wonderful thing to me to be a member of a great Faculty whose history and traditions went back to the earliest times and to be entitled to exercise a profession which I then thought and still think to require the highest gifts of mind and character for its worthy pursuit.”

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”

“It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.”

“… will you be so kind as to provide me with a few places where I might look for a murderer?"
"The mirror's a great place to start”

“If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.”

“Below me Rontu was running along the cliffs barking at the screaming gulls. Pelicans were chattering as they finished the blue water. But suddenly I thought of Tutok, and the island seemed very quiet.”

“Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me;
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.”

“Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?"

"Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming.”

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”