We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

The young man who has not wept is savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what is or what it means can never be said.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain and a positive crime in the statesman.

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humors.

To understand one's self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one's self is the romantic.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.