A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

Accent the ugly until it becomes gorgeous.

Movies are, like sharp sunlight, merciless; we do not imagine, we view.

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other.

The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.