--Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart
Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
--Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow
I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.
--Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations
History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations.
--Arthur Koestler, Darkness At Noon
She turned; she bruised under her heel the scaly head of this dark suspicion-as terrifying to her as his guilt was to him. 'O Absalom, my Absalom!' Come, come, we will not entertain such a thought. God himself would not urge it upon a mother.
--Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy