The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.

the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.

In the evenings the art of building gave way to that of music, which is architecture, too, though invisible.

I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.

Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.

It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.