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

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

The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time.

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.

[Science] has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts.

No fashion has ever been created expressly for the lean purse or for the fat woman: the dressmaker's ideal is the thin millionaires.

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