No great talker ever did any great thing yet, in this world.

Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can be pure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest.

Nature I believe in. True art aims to, represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal--partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me.

You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration.

Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names.

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.

The radical defect in Christianity is that it tried to win the world by a bribe, and it has become a nullity.