Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.

Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile.

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.