The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

There is no magic method of beginning... Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterward live finely

A sense of the value of time... is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry.

The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.