You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything

Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.

If you want to write, keep cats.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.