“No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.”

So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

If there is a God what the hell is He for?

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame.

He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph.

Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

She was the captain of her soul

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863…

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession’s phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.