We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.