To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.

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

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

To be bewitched is not to be saved, though all the magicians and aesthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so.

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.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.