You cant manage yourself, Root. How do you expect to manage others? — Babe Ruth

"He is really a great outfielder, one of the greatest. He plays batters correctly, covers a lot more ground than youd think hed be able to do with his bulk, and has one of the deadliest throwing arms ever known. Besides, Babe has an accurate baseball judgment and never throws to the wrong base."

"Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week he might have lasted a long time and become a great star."

"Theres one thing in baseball that always gets my goat and thats the intentional pass. It isnt fair to the batter. It isnt fair to his club. Its a raw deal for the fans and it isnt baseball. By "baseball," I mean good square American sportsmanship because baseball represents America in sport. If we get down to unfair advantages in our national game we are putting out a mighty bad advertisement."

"Say, if I hadnt been sick last summer, Id have broken hell out of that home run record! Besides, the President gets a four-year contract. Im only asking for three.✱"

"You can bother me to autograph anything you want. When you quit bothering me to sign autographs, then Ill know Im through. Slip me the old apple and a pen. And tell em to keep on bothering me."

"I could hardly wait for the next mornings news stories. Despite the defeat, I thought some praiseworthy mention would be made of my ten perfect innings. Then I had my first lesson in the cost of playing with the worlds greatest ball player. Quite properly the headlines screamed the news of Babes cracking the home run record. Vivid descriptions of his 28th homer clearing the grandstand roof. But no mention of me. Down at the end of the piece one line was given to the Boston pitcher. It said, "Hoyt pitched for Boston." I was to know another version of that incident in after years, again Ruths teammate. As our Yankee ball club pulled into tour cities, the sports pages would say, "Ruth and twenty-four other ball players arrived in town today." This was the price we paid playing with the big fellow—but it was worth it. Babe returned it to us ten times over, and none of us who played with him would ever trade that experience for all the headlines in the country."

"At one point a heated discussion arose over the possible interpretation of Lolita as a grandiose metaphor of the classic Europeans hopeless love for young, seductive, barbaric America. In his afterword to the novel Nabokov himself mentions this as the naive theory of one of the publishers who turned the book down. And although there cant be the slightest doubt that Nabokov did not mean to limit Lolita to that interpretation, there is no reason to exclude it as one of the novels many dimensions. The point, I felt, became obvious when one drew the line between Lolita as a delightfully frivolous story on the verge of pornography and Lolita as a literary masterpiece, the only convincing love story of our century."

"I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hairs-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up — he had judged. The horror! He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth — the strange commingling of desire and hate."

"The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva."

"There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness."

"He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust — just uneasiness — nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him — why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself."

"Well buy a lot of clothes, but we dont really need em Things we buy to cover up whats inside Cause they made us hate ourself and love their wealth."