There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.

The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.