To study history is to study literature.

A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.

The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.

Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.

Taste is often one of the aspects of fashion.

The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray.

Taste is improved by cultivation.

The drama is the book of the people.

It is supposable that, in the eyes of angels, a struggle down a dark lane and a battle of Leipsic differ in nothing but excess of wickedness.

The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.

Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.

Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life.

Knowing the question is more important than knowing the answer. It makes you curious, lets you think, and helps you to understand and open your mind.

The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on ‘our side’. Is it?

[P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort

This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad but those who taste in living awareness every drop of the good.

It's important to remember that because these athletes exercise so beyond what even a normal active person would, they generally must also supplement their diet.

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

Reason lies betweene the spurre and the bridle. [Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.]

If I can look at a 6-year-old and learn from him, that's life. That's God for me, that's inspiring.

Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.