A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.

The actual God of many Americans... is simply the current of American life.

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.

The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.