I am fairly tired--bored beyond endurance--by the world we live in, and its ideals, and am ready to say so, not violently, but kindly, as one rubs salt into the back of a flogged sailor as though one loved him.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

American art, like the American language and American education, was as far as possible sexless.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.