youth is always sure that change must mean something better.

The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful.

when we leave society and come into the presence of Nature, we become children again; and the fictions of thought and action assumed among men drop off like a garment.

... if fiction does not show us a better life than reality, what is the good of it?

In all troublous events we may find comfort, though it be only in the negative admission that things might have been worse.

This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

The first step is what I like to be sure of ... to the second step it often binds you.