Our understanding of Shakespeare already depends largely on the vitality of Renaissance elements in our education. Each man must live in his own generation, as the saying is; but the generations are bound together by the golden links of the great tradition of civilization.

Shakespeare is, essentially, the emanation of the Renaissance. The overflow of his fame on the Continent in later years was but the sequel of the flood of the Renaissance in Western Europe. He was the child of that great movement, and marks its height as it penetrated the North with civilization.

Within yourself deliverance must be searched for, because each man makes his own prison.

Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.