The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.
The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.
Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their center.
When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone.
Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They may all collapse altogether.
Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.
All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man’s natural sentiment in the face of death.
Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.
Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.
We do right enough darling, if we go wrong together.
There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.
Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.
A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.