There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another.

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.