What one reads, or rather all that comes to us, is surely only of interest and value in proportion as we find ourselves therein, -- form given to what was vague, what slumbered stirred to life.

One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

What one reads, or rather all that comes to us, is surely only of interest and value in proportion as we find ourselves therein, -- form given to what was vague, what slumbered stirred to life.

The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape

Though I have no productive worth, I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.

What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.

If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich.