"As a school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons."

"The love of Nature is a great gift, and if it is frozen or crushed out, the character can hardly fail to suffer from the loss."

"A contemplative habit of mind has advantages ranging from the most trivial to the most profound."

“Behold then in this little play A world-wide truth set free ! Easily may a symbol teach What thy reason cannot reach.”

"Shakespeare's knowledge of mankind has become proverbial: he has justly been called the master of the human mind."

"In the list as above set down, will be found every positively known fact of Shakespeare’s life, lean and meagre as the invoice is."

"One lives in one's genius, other things shall be (or pass away) in death."

"In the chapter on "His Age," Professor Gervinus pours out the results of a profound study of the writings attributed to both men."

"When joy and pain are overcome, peace and love remain, and Wisdom softly whispers words of rest and calm."

"He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of misanthropes."

"Correct or incorrect, relevant or meaningless, knowledge and pseudo-knowledge are as common as dirt and are therefore taken for granted."

"Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable..."

"We are living in what the Greeks called the καιρός – the right time – for a “metamorphosis of the gods” ..."

"Of all that I have ever seen this Calvary of Breughel’s is the most suggestive and, dramatically, the most appalling."

"Prolong the leisure ... and there will have to be more cinemas, more newspapers, more bad fiction, more radios and more cheap automobiles."

"To please in Conversation is an Art which all People believe they understand and practise, tho’ most are ignorant or deficient in it."

"Throughout the Middle Ages this demon was known as Acedia, or, in English, Accidie. Monks were still his favourite victims..."

"He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat..."

"The great men who stand out in history have been partly benefactors of mankind and partly quite the reverse."

"Don Quixote, in Cervantes' novel, is a typical example of the victim of triangular desire, but he is far from being the only one."

"I have said enough to show that reading is one of the cheaper recreations: after listening to the radio probably the cheapest."

"Foremost among the satisfactions we owe to the imagination is the enjoyment of works of art."

"The achievement of personality means nothing less than the optimum development of the whole individual human being."