Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

For Tommy, on that hot and empty afternoon, was in a state of mind in which grown-up people go away and write books about their whole world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old, was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale.

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.