The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.