No child should ever be too sad to play.

The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. ("The Striding Place")

A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point of metaphysics. To a rational mind, nothing bad ever really happens. He was talking high-minded balls. Twaddle! I thought. I said, 'Oh? Do you mean that every gas chamber has a silver lining?

We had firsthand witnessed the ethereal evil of crushing hope just when it had peaked__ike an open door, visible to you as you approach it from miles away, just closing on you when you have only two more yards to go.

Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.

There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.