The mind leaps, and leaps perhaps with a sort of elation, through the immensities of space, but the spirit, frightened and cold, longs to have once more above its head the inverted bowl beyond which may lie whatever paradise its desires may create.

To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

Nature, in her blind thirst for life, has filled every possible cranny of the rotting earth with some sort of fantastic creature.

Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.

Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

It is ... sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.

It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

Science has always promised two things not necessarily related-an increase first in our powers, second in our happiness or wisdom, and we have come to realize that is the first and less important of the two promises which it has kept most abundantly.