“Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.”

Friendship takes time.

We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.

We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.

If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.

I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.

An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.

Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worthwhile to call one another’s attention to their presence.

The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.

There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.

Economics and ethics have little in common.

The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.

A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.

the most comfortable characteristic of the period [1775-1825], and the one which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept a good purpose as a substitute for good work.

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.

real letter-writing … is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

I’d learned enough about circuitry in high school electronics to know how to drive a TV and get it to draw – shapes of characters and things.

The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

If I ever find myself overwhelmed, it’s only because I am overwhelmed by how much more I want to learn. That is what drives me.

I have to get a licence to drive a motorcycle to protect myself and the people around me. I am adamant there should be some sort of licensing required to have children.

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

Love, grief, and the complexity of being human are the driving forces for every artistic revolution.

Have Faith. Where’er thy bark is driven, – The calm’s disport, the tempest’s mirth, – Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven, The habitants of earth.