There is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right with America.

Live simply so that others might simply live.

It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—

The air was thick, warm, heavy, sluggish.

In the end, the true test is not the speeches a president delivers; it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches.

Spring, with new buds popping out, the fragrance of blooming flowers, clothing shed with the mild temperatures, is my favorite season.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, We shall fight on the seas and oceans.

Biting the strawberry, thinking storms, I see her. A slim, young girl in a pink crepe dress.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Last week he was just fine, yesterday he was just fine, and today he was just fine.

We were going to be there early, but I'm bad with directions. We got lost.

In some ways, he was this town at its best: strong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful.

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

She faced her peremptory father with as much aplomb as she could muster, hoping her laconic refusal carried the verisimilitude of confidence. Fat chance.

[G]overnment of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly—mostly let them have their whiteness.

Out of the cloud-folds of her garment shaken, over the woodlands brown and bare, over the harvest-fields forsaken, silent and soft, and slow, descends the snow.

As soon as the social worker opened the door, he was overwhelmed by the odious smell of rancid food and dirty diapers and nauseating cat urine.

He was overwhelmed by the job and its exigent demands and its stressful nature and its long, miserable, endless hours.

Obdurate in his refusal to listen, insolent in his back-talking, flippant about his bad grades, the behavior of the intractable teenager caused great consternation to his parents who did not know what to do.

Unlike his ambivalent wife, Joe was an implacable foe of the new mandate. He wrote letters. He called congressmen. He protested.

The teacher’s peremptory, imperious, unpleasant tone as soon as I entered the room was a harbinger that his class would be a miserable experience. People like that are just so . . . impossible.

For her incipient self-awareness and for being implacable in her decision to leave and for her audacity in challenging the mores of the era, Nora Helmer is an iconic figure in world literature renowned for numerous reasons.