...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.

Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age.

The attraction of horror is a mental, or even an intellectual, excitement, but the fascination of the repulsive, so noticeable incontemporary writing, can spring openly from some rotted substance within our civilization.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

Few forms of life are so engaging as birds.

Theories have nothing to do with life.

True goodness is an inward grace, not an outward necessity.