A man, a real man, must never be an agent, a tool, or a gambler—acting for himself or for others—he must employ such. A real man—a financier—was neve… - Theodore Dreiser

Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.

"It was given unto you to know the Peace of God," he insisted, quoting Paul and thereafter sentences from Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, on how easy it was — if Clyde would but repeat and pray as he had asked him to — for him to know and delight in the "peace that passeth all understanding."

The conventional mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast mass is not disturbed. Nothing of the subtlety of life is perceived. No least inkling of its storms or terrors is ever discovered except through accident.