Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things.

Sanity is madness put to good use.