If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness--a color, a weight, a texture--that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.