I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of ….

The richness and endless variety of human relationships ... that's what authors, even the finest and greatest, only succeed in hinting at. It's a hop….

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young..

What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live..

one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace….

No Vermont town ever let anybody in it starve..

perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old,….

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored..

help that is not positively necessary is a hindrance to a growing organism..

...there are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe - but bored. Or yo….

Vermont is the only place in America where I ever hear thrift spoken of with respect..

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a ….

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, t….

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary..

Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell..

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself..

If we could learn how to utilize all the intelligence and patent good will children are born with, instead of ignoring much of it - why - there might….

there's no such thing as luck. Nothing ever just happens to anybody. ... nothing can really happen to a person till he lets it happen..

What is life, but one long risk?.

What better can any of us do than to reach for our own stars ... and know which they are?.

Compared with more emotional types, Vermonters seem to have few passions. But those they have are great and burning. The greatest is their conviction….