Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Cunning is strength withheld.

What we call results are beginnings.

I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words.

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.