Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.

And here you are, a stripling of a boy who has already survived the worst this land can throw at a body, but suddenly ready to give up after one mistake?” Dr. Snailwater’s voice grew fierce. “You should be grateful some things can be fixed.”
“What if I can’t?” Jack asked in a small voice.
“Then you try again!

The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill.

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.

If I quit now, I will soon be back to where I started. And when I started I was desperately wishing to be where I am now.

He knew that she took life as it came, opposed her tough-fibered mind to whatever obstacles there might be, fought on with a determination that would not recognize defeat, and kept on fighting even when she saw defeat was inevitable.