Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness.

I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language.

It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.