America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city.

Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.

Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.