It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility

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

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

There is no right government except good government.

The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.

Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.