We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge.
No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before.
All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little.
Broad tolerance in the matter of beliefs is necessarily a part of the new ethics.
There are two methods for the literary study of any book – the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.
How sweet Japanese woman is! All the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her.
At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.
The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man – that is to say, the strongest and cleverest – is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person.
In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.
The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.