Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.