Americans have a taste for…rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-horse. I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of wood a certain spirit that is childish in the good sense of the word; something that is innocent, and easily pleased.

The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.

The word good has many meanings.

If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.