Twenty years he wandered,—twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, “What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?” In the narrow New York parish his soul seemed cramped and smothered.
From his seminal work, this passage captures the persistent existential questioning and spiritual confinement experienced by an individual seeking meaning.
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Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.