America is still a government of the naive, for the naive, and by the naive. He who does not know this, nor relish it, has no inkling of the nature of his country.

The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.

They go in [to the library] not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.

Friendships do not grow up in any carefully tended and contemplated fashion.... They begin haphazard.

Truth and Beauty (perhaps Keats was wrong in identifying them: perhaps they have the relation of Wit and Humour, or Rain and Rainbow) are of interest only to hungry people. There are several kinds of hunger. If Socrates, Spinoza, and Santayana had had free access to a midnight icebox we would never have heard of them. Shall I be ashamed of my little mewing truths?... I ask to be forgiven: they are such tiny ones.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

The censure of a dog is something no man can stand.