It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.

Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with their own great themes.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.

Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.