Of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six.

What a lark! What a plunge!

Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.

Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue.