Quotes by Henry Abbott

“Sometimes I doubt that anyone with a philosophical turn of mind is fit to judge anyone. He never comprehends the concept of guilt.””

“I cannot be critical of an infant whose only possible source of nourishment can be found in the dugs of a wolf.””

“...[It comes] from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain … The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. … Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. … You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go … you cannot get relief …””

“Indeed, it is almost a rule that the more simple and commonplace something is, the more difficult it is to understand it.””

“The wasteland that is your memory now comes under the absolute dictatorship of idols too terrible to mention.””

“It is funny that some of must not only get our bearings but must also know all the details of the world before we venture out into it.””

“They never found Captain Henry, but Samuel finally got his answer from Belle: Yes, she said, she would be his wife. She believed that God had intended them to “meet and love,” and that He had purposely sent her a Yankee, a Union boy from Brooklyn. “Women,” she reasoned, “can sometimes work wonders; and may not he, who is of Northern birth, come by degrees to love, for my sake, the ill-used South?””