There was a time when “man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,” this New World, “commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” I would strive with all my strength to give that sense of wonder to those who will come after me.

God created men to test the souls of women.

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.

He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.

I have feared, at times, that my self-reliance, even more than my prominence, might prove hard for any man to take.

I sat down on a bridge, and wondered; I saw before me hundreds upon hundreds of miles, painful and exhausted, and I asked heaven if this was necessary to a pilgrimage.

"God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.

You took too much man, too much, too much.

If you want to test a man's character, give him power.

Exploration was for those with a measure of peasant blood, those with big thighs and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took bread and salt, on every inch of flesh and spirit.

But we are all human, I thought, wondering what I meant.

When you considered this world — people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core — it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were.

The realization that my problem was one that concerned all men, a problem of living and thinking, suddenly swept over me and I was overwhelmed by fear and respect as I suddenly saw and felt how deeply my own personal life and opinions were immersed in the eternal stream of great ideas. Though it offered some confirmation and gratification, the realization was not really a joyful one. It was hard and had a harsh taste because it implied responsibility and no longer being allowed to be a child; it meant standing on one’s own feet.