Parnassus on Wheels

In this tragic, restless world there must be some place where at last we can lay our heads and be at rest. Some people call it death. Some call it God.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.

God sees that if man is contented he will never win his way to Him.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content—all the great things in life are done by discontented people.

What helpless creatures men are, after all!

I have always suffered from the feeling that it’s better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and I’ve done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is full of echoes and voices of better men.

“The art of baking bread is as transcendent a mystery as the art of making sonnets,” said Redbeard.

Calling us men doesn’t make us men. No creature on earth has a right to think himself a human being if he doesn’t know at least one good book. The man that spends every evening chewing Piper Heidsieck at the store is unworthy to catch the intimations of a benevolent Creator. The man that’s got a few good books on his shelf is making his wife happy, giving his children a square deal, and he’s likely to be a better citizen himself.

“Talkers never write. They go on talking.”

“Common sense?” he repeated. “Good Lord, ma’am, sense is the most uncommon thing in the world.