“A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.”

It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace.

Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.

Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning

Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one’s belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.

When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.

There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.