To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.

Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.