Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.