Words are intermediary between thought and things. We express ourselves really not through words, which are only signs, but through what they signify - through things.

Our understanding of Shakespeare already depends largely on the vitality of Renaissance elements in our education. Each man must live in his own generation, as the saying is; but the generations are bound together by the golden links of the great tradition of civilization.

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done.

Agitation is that part of our intellectual life where vitality results; there ideas are born, breed and bring forth.

Genius is that in which the soul of a race bums at its brightest, revealing and preserving its vision; works of art are great and significant in proportion to the clarity and fulness with which they incarnate this vision.

"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better.

The school of life embodies a compulsory education that no man escapes.