Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.

There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury.

Pride's chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.

The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.