Extended excerpt  [Diary entry, August 30]:

“Be kind. Be kind, not only to friends, but to strangers. Preserve in the soul a kindly incandescence so that wherever you go a kindly glow passes through the streets and fills the home with light. There is nothing more that anyone can say. None of the poisons of life can rot the characters of human beings who are honest and kind. If only it were possible to tell children these simple things!” (pp. 250-251)

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/250/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Diary entry, January 1950 – on New York City]:

“Yet from all over the world ideas pour into New York day and night throughout the year like pulsations in an electric current. Raise a voice in Java and New York hears it. Fire a shot in Palestine and one hundred New Yorkers spring to arms. Dancers in India, orchestra leaders in Italy, actors in Dublin, writers in London, make pilgrimages to Gotham and are welcome. There are no lonely geniuses here. Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers. We give houseroom to the people of all nations. (pp. 4-5)

Source note: Atkinson’s quote was featured as part of a 1974 IBM (International Business Machines) Corporation advertising campaign. You can view one of the ad posters here, via the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/2015646143/

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/4/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Diary entry, November 10]:

“To anyone who believes that God extends through all forms of human nature as well as wild nature, the whining tone of the professional dominie is intolerable. It is also insulting to God, who needs no protection. It is professional cant, like ham acting. In case God is interested in manners, He would probably enjoy having men behave like men instead of like obsequious valets. I have not objection to churches so long as they do not interfere with God’s work.” (p. 325)

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/324/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Journal entry, August 1950]:

“Genius looks forward, according to Emerson. Books and knowledge are the things from which the scholar departs into the realm of life and creation. It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. Any hack can accumulate knowledge methodically.” (p. 252)

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/252/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Journal entry, February 1950. Atkinson is referencing American ‘Groundhog Day.’]:

“The myth is very old, indeed. Ancient Egyptians thought that bears were weather prophets; Europeans, wolves; English, otters. The early English settlers in America substituted the groundhog for the otter. People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.” (p. 37) 

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/36/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Journal entry, April 1950]:

“To reject life is to build walls and construct a graveyard for the mind and spirit. To be lacking in perception and understanding is to die. To raise abstract intellectual barriers against creation and love is to be already dead in spirit. Aristocracies commit suicide, for they live by illusions. The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view.” (p. 115)

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/114/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Journal entry, August 1950]:

“And the virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking – looking speculatively at faces in the street, raffish corners of the water front, clouds above the sky line, reflections on the water, shadows across the buildings – restoring to visible beauty the million things that have been lost and forgotten or discarded.” (p. 248) 

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/248/mode/2up

Extended excerpt  [Journal entry, January 1950. Atkinson is reflecting on the fallibility of elected officials, including the President of the United States]:

“Alas, he is as you and I – fallible and bewildered. No one can solve the affairs of the world. Those that are known are incredibly complicated and interdependent – the political, economic, scientific, human, and spiritual all entangled and interwoven. Pluck at one thread, and other threads appear; one knot leads to another. But many of the problems of the worlds are not even known. Although the President is advised by experts, the experts are fallible, too, lacking information on vital problems in their own fields. In a dynamic world nothing is final.

We need supermen to rule us – the job is so vast and the need for wise judgment is so urgent. But, alas, there are no supermen. Those who rule us are like you and me. It is a frightening situation.” (p. 27)

Source link: Library – Once Around the Sun (1951) Open Library [free subscription service] & Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/oncearoundsun00atki#page/26/mode/2up