Delta girls are born dancing and never stop, which is as it should be, for surely it is the finest form of human amusement except tennis and talking.… - William Alexander Percy

One night Jakie Smith rushed into my room with the sudden illumination: "I know what it is! The law is common sense plus clear English!" I've never heard a better definition of what the law should be and isn't. (Ch. 11)

That short period of my life spent in the line is the only one I remember step by step – as if it moved sub specie aeternitatis. Not that I enjoyed it; I hated it. Not that I was fitted for it by temperament or ability, I was desperately unfitted; but it, somehow, had meaning, and daily life hasn't: it was part of a common endeavor, and daily life is isolated and lonely. (Ch. 17, on his service on the Western Front in World War I)

I never heard them over their juleps express a philosophy of life, and if I had it would have been incomprehensible to me, but a philosophy was implicit in all their thoughts and actions. It probably made the Southern pattern. Perhaps it is all contained in a remark of Father's when he was thinking aloud one night and I sat at his feet eavesdropping eagerly: "I guess a man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able – always remembering the results will be infinitesimal – and to attend to his own soul." (Ch. 7)