It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

We must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.

Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

Science has always promised two things not necessarily related; an increase first in our powers, second in our happiness or wisdom, and we have come to realize that it is the first and less important of the two promises which it has kept most abundantly.

Nature, in her blind thirst for life has filled every possible cranny of the rotting earth with some sort of fantastic creature.

The mind leaps, and leaps perhaps with a sort of elation, through the immensities of space, but the spirit, frightened and cold, longs to have once more above its head the inverted bowl beyond which may lie whatever paradise its desires may create.