The guiding idea of this book has been to gather together sayings, maxims, and aphorisms, which, in some respect or other are of profound and permanent spiritual value. Moreover, the net has been cast wide, with the result that the selected items are extremely variegated; for, in the present age, protective dividing walls have crumbled; the whole world has become our parish, and our gaze must now be universal. The quotations here presented were collected during the course of a lifetime. Each quotation was hand-picked for a particular purpose, and anything deemed superfluous was excluded. Wise and useful quotations are of course endless, but a selection is what it is and, far from being arbitrary, this anthology, taken as a whole, amounts to a succinct, but powerful, affirmation of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful . This is its purpose-and may it bear fruit.