When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.

We can’t turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.

The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.