In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can to education today is to teach few subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.

The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

I have read the Aeneid through more often than I have read any long poem.

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.