Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.

Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.

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

Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

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

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.