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

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

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

A country without a memory is a country of madmen.

Plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them, but for a man of sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly no place like home.

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.

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.