To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

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

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.

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

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.