The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.

Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is in the American continent.