True tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal personage is compensated for by the dignity and greatness of his character.

Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.

Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.

To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.

Poetry, mythology, and religion represent the world as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it.