The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.

To keep beauty in its place is to make all things beautiful.

Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

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