We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.

You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

By beauty of course I mean truth, for the one involves the other; it is only the false in art which is ugly, and it is only the ugly that is universal.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.