Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin-a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people.... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy.