Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

Imitation cannot go above its model.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.

Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.