Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things.

Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.

Whether the aim is in heaven or on earth, wisdom or wealth, the essential condition of its pursuit and attainment is always security and order.

In order to begin an analysis, there must already be a synthesis present in the mind.

If the Americans, in addition to the eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the more unofficial symbols of bison, moose and Indian, should ever need another emblem, one which is friendly and pleasant, then I think they should choose the grapefruit. Or rather the half grapefruit, for this fruit only comes in halves, I believe. Practically speaking, it is always yellow, always just as fresh and well served. And it always comes at the same, still hopeful hour of the morning.

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.