We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.

The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?

If you know you are right, stay the course even though the whole world seems to be against you and everyone you know questions your judgment. When you prevail--and you eventually will if you stick to the job--they will all tell you that they knew all along you could do it.

Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.