The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.

An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.