There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

Convention, so often a mask for injustice.

A people's literature is the great text-book for real knowledge of them.

The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly -- that and only that, is tragedy.

The greater the suffering depicted, the more terrible the events, the more intense our pleasure.

When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.