Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress.

The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell