Some persons have ventured to say that it is only since Englishmen ceased to believe in the Bible that they began to discover how beautiful it was.

In order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stone.

It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.

The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature.

The more you wish to be, the wiser you are; while the wish to have is apt to be foolish in proportion to its largeness.

The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person.