The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.

Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Let a human being throw the energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.