The true grotesque being the expression of the repose or play of a serious mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the full exertion of a frivolous one.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

I know well that happiness is in little things.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite--variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite--energy. It is the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.

Race is precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any animal.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.