While you are living, part of you has slipped away to the cemetery.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading.

I am alone here in New York, no longer a we.

the great is seldom a deterrent to the mediocre

History ... with its long, leisurely, gentlemanly labors, the books arriving by post, the cards to be kept and filed, the sections to be copied, the documents to be checked, is the ideal pursuit for the New England mind.

Harvard (across the river in Cambridge) and Boston are two ends of one mustache. ... Without the faculty, the visitors, the events that Harvard brings to the life here, Boston would be intolerable to anyone except genealogists, antique dealers, and those who find repletion in a closed local society.

When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist.