I dont think there is anything on earth more wonderful than those wistful incomplete friendships one makes now and then in an hour...'s talk. You never see the people again, but the lingering sense of their presence in the world is like the glow of an unseen city at night--makes you feel the teemingness of it all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Isn't it curious how completely ignorant we all are of the most important part of our bodily mechanism. It is really criminal. Yet... there is no nation in the world that doesnt surround sex with fantastic walls. Of course ours are sillier than any--but not much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the way--about Bolshevism: one has to remember that all that is published in the press is propaganda, that the Bolsheviki are t...he moderate social-revolutionaries, a political party, and the Soviets are a system of government based on the idea of "pure democracy" (Mso called in the textbooks on gov't) that every man shall take direct part in the government of the country--which is arrived at by industrial representation through the heirarchy of soviets, and that much the same system would be in vogue in America--(geographical instead of industrial units) if Hamilton and the rest had taken the New England town-meeting as the unit of government instead of importing Montesquieu's ideas. It's silly to idealize things in Russia, but it is criminal to condemn them unheard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting o...ut at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The war is utter damn nonsense--a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking [sic] malignity on the part of those who don't do the f...ighting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never understood exactly why people get engaged--The only time I ever did the most disastrous things happened--but I feel that t...here's a great deal to be said for immediate matrimony always. If I once got started I'd probably have to become a mormon to cover my confusion. What I mean is that if he and she are crazy about each other it is sheer tempting God to stay apart, come what may. And if people arent crazy about each other being engaged wont help them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's rather grisly, isnt it, how soon a living man becomes nothing more than a collection of stocks and bonds and debts and real e...state?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Still, I'm much happier here, really in it than I've been for an age. People don't hate much at the front; there's no one to hate,... except the poor devils across the way, whom they [the French soldiers] know to be as miserable as themselves. They don't talk hypocritical bosh about the beauty & manliness of war: they feel in their souls that if they weren't cowards they would have ended the thing long ago--by going home, where they want to be. And lastly and best, they don't jabber about atrocities--of course, everyone commits them--though about one story in a million that reaches our blessed Benighted States is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »