The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.

I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.

There nearly always is a method in madness.