All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.

At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.