Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't find a parent who will admit that it is his child.

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

What is lovely never dies, put passes into other loveliness.

The ocean moans over dead men's bones.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not.

A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led - with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!

A man may do worse than make what the world calls a not wholly happy marriage.

A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.

Everyone ought to wish to marry; some ought to be allowed to marry; and others ought to marry twice - to make the average good.

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.

In every age have mighty spirits dwelt unseen with man, biding the hour that needed them.

Nothing except time is wasted in Italy.

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.

The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.

There is no man at once so unselfish and selfish as a man in love.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

To the mass of mankind - meaning also womankind - marriage may be the only possible thing; but to the individual, it may be the one thing impossible.

What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.

What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.

What is lovely never dies but passes into another loveliness Star dust or sea foam Flower or winged air.

They fail and they alone who have not striven.

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

To keep the heart unwrinkled to be hopeful kindly cheerful reverent that is to triumph over old age.

Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers; Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.