Quotes from RANDOLPH SILLIMAN BOURNE

How shall I describe Youth, the time of contradictions and anomalies? The fiercest radicalisms, the most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible gayety, bitter melancholy--all these moods are equally part of that showery spring-time of life.

Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world.

The State is a jealous God and will brook no rivals. Its sovereignty must pervade everyone and all feeling must be run into the stereotyped forms of romantic patriotic militarism which is the traditional expression of the State herd-feeling.

To keep one's reactions warm and true, is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation.

The President is an elected king, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king.... Kings have often been selected this way in European history, and the Roman Emperor was regularly chosen by election.

War is the health of the state. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

The magical good fortune of attractive personal appearance makes its way almost without effort in the world, breaking down all sorts of walls of disapproval and lack of interest. Even the homely person can attract by personal charm. But deformity cannot even be charming.

About the rhinoceros Here is an animal with a hide two feet think and no apparent interest in politics. What a waste.

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing.

No matter what we have come through, or how many perils we have safely passed, or how many imperfect and jagged - in some places perhaps irreparably - our life has been, we cannot in our heart of hearts imagine how it could have been different. As we look back on it, it slips in behind us in orderly array, and, with all its mistakes, acquires a sort of eternal fitness, and even, at times, of poetic glamour.