Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.

There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal.

Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.