The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.

People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

America is a young country with an old mentality.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.