From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.

The new American, like the new European, was the servant of the powerhouse, as the European of the twelfth century was the servant of the Church.

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.