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

Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.

The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.

If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

Culture requires in the first place a certain balance of material and spiritual values.