We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it was very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undeserved compliment.

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night —little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

You Too? I thought I was the only one.

A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.