I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters."

"When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase."

From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament. . . . The dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.

"German is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate."

"Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable."