The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred.

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.

Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.

We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.