Irving Babbitt

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.

Seeing to it that a youngster grows up believing not just in the here and now but also in the grand maybes of life guarantees that some small yet crucial part of him remains forever a child.