We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding

Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.

School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.