"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.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

One can re-create what was in the mind of a mathematician a thousand years ago, recapture the truth of the intellect wherever it may have once come to light; but the image of art, that infinite variable of perception and expression in the individual, - that is not easily re-created, at least, not with certainty and in its original fulness.

You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman.

Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.