Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to. - Thornton Wilder

The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.

She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay to Peru.

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.