In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

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

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

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.