To his son Henry, the quality that distinguished his father from all the other figures in the family group, was that, in his opinion, Charles Francis… - Henry Adams

Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one — except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative, practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity.

The Chartres apse is as entertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because it overrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imagination whatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the feebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant or strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive plants from the touch of a vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a woman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts, but education and politics are two different and often contradictory things.