Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.

A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.

Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.

Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs.

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.