The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry.

True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the would be sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

In art, there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts.

Having disciples is in the end like having children, only not with love but with self-love preeminent.

Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon.

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all.