To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"