To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

Take a portion of wit, And fashion it fit, Like a needle, with point and with eye: A point that can wound, An eye to look round, And at folly or vice let it fly