“Here I am,’ I thought, ‘back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.”

For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

It is a curious thing. That every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

To understand all is to forgive all.

Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.

You don’t remove the evil in a person by killing the person.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher.

My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

I’m quite deaf now; such a comfort.

Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.

The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray!

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

Dignity of position adds to dignity of character, as well as to dignity of carriage. Give us a proud position, and we are impelled to act up to it.

I believe that every American should have stable, dignified housing; health care; education – that the most very basic needs to sustain modern life should be guaranteed in a moral society.

Let no man’s place, or dignity, or riches, puff him up; and let no man’s low condition or poverty abase him. For the chief points are faith towards God, hope towards Christ, the enjoyment of those good things for which we look, and love towards God and our neighbor.

When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.

There are those who believe justice and dignity are reserved only for some people. Young men have died in police custody, and the growing heel of poverty has worn down harder on children of color…We must fight back.

Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It’s fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.