A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.

I have learned to prize the quiet, lightning deed, not the applauding thunder at its heels that men call fame.

Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile.

It is a characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone.

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.

In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.