Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method. You could ignore a subject; no subject is all-inclusive. But a method can plausibly be applied to anything within the field of consciousness.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

The imagination can be happy in places where the whole man is not.