Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

Of all the minor creatures of mythology, fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable.

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.

A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.

Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-postsfor support rather than illumination.

Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.