“Tampaknya hanya buku yang paling pantas diceritakan dengan bangga oleh manusia beradab, bukan BMW, Mercedes, ataupun Volvo. Apabila ada manusia di zaman sekarang yang menyebut dirinya modern tetapi tidak mengindahkan buku, memilikinya, dan membacanya, maka dengan demikian manusia tersebut telah mengambil inisiatif menjadikan dirinya sebagai hewan.”
“Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn t even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we ll keep house.”
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! YOU VE READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPERS! NOW, SHUDDER AS YOU OBSERVE, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, THAT MOST RAREAND RAGIC OF NATURE S MISTAKES! I GIVE YOU... THE AVERAGE MAN! PHYSICALLY UNREMARKABLE , IT HAS INSTEAD A DEFORMED SET OF VALUES. NOTICE THE HIDEOUSLY BLOATED SENSE OF HUMANITY S IMPORTANCE. THE CLUB-FOOTED SOCIAL CONSCIENCE AND THE WITHERED OPTIMISM. IT S CERTAINLY NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH IS IT? MOST REPULSIVE OF ALL , ARE ITS FRAIL AND USELESS NOTIONS OF ORDER AND SANITY. IF TOO MUCH WEIGHT IS PLACED UPON THEM... ... THEY SNAP. HOW DOES IT LIVE , I HEAR YOU ASK? HOW DOES THIS POOR, PATHETIC SPECIMEN SURVIVE IN TODAY S HARSH AND IRRATIONAL WORLD? THE SAD ANSWER IS NOT VERY WELL. ”
“Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.”
“We must not listen to those who advise us being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.”
“It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.”
“There was murder, there was rape, there were unspeakable practices, and all of them were for the good, the bloody good, the bloody myth, for the grail, for the Tower.”
“And remember also that in fighting against man we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.”
“The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”
“Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.”
“But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. [...] A man ain t nothing but a man, said Baby Suggs. But a son? Well now, that s somebody.”
“Heed my words, daughter, if you ever mean to be happy: Never give yourself to a man.”
“Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?”
“For now. But if I ever decide you re useless, you are a dead man. To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service. Bravo. Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. Bra-vo!”
“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”
“The human animal is a beast that dies and if he s got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting!--Which it never can be....”
“Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n ont pas cédé. [Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.]”