Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable, precisely, the balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives and broad foundations

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.

Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.

I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish.