As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.

If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!

The mind resorts to reason for want of training.

Since [Rousseau's] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.

For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that Icare. Only, if such is God's will, and Fate and Evolution--let there be God!