Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

abroad it is our habit to regard all other travelers in the light of personal and unpardonable grievances. They are intruders into our chosen realms of pleasure, they jar upon our sensibilities, they lessen our meager share of comforts, they are everywhere in our way, they are always an unnecessary feature in the landscape.

Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.