Generations that had never seen war.

We had the great misfortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End, 70

let's not lose sight of the nobler manifestations of man...

I’m only trying to suggest that as we find ourselves in this particularly unfortunate misconstrued, ungodly juncture of civilization, let’s not lose sight of the nobler manifestations of man and of the greater half of his character, which consists not of taglines and bottom lines but of love, heroism, reciprocity, ecstasy, kindness and truth. What a bloated bunch of horseshit, you will say. And good for you. I welcome you to shoot me up close in the head.
- Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End, 39

All men have sublime thoughts..

For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

the chief disgrace in the world...

It is not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit; - not to be reckoned one character; - not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong...
-Ralph Waldo Emerson