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 principle of fashion is . . . the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again.

When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, thehistoric sense.

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary.

The very notion of tabu is one of the rightest notions in the world. Better any old tabu than none, for a man cannot be said to be"on the side of the stars" at all, unless he makes refusals.

The indiscreet questioner - and by indiscreet questions I mean questions which it is not conceivably a man's duty either to the community or to any individual to answer - is a marauder, and there is every excuse for treating him as such.