The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

The unforgivable sin is the refusal to pardon.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

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

People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them.