There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, "Please strike here!

Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.