If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.

Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.

Which of us is not saying to himself which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: " I shall alter that when I have a little more time"? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted.

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

Nearly all bookish people are snobs, and especially the more enlightened among them. They are apt to assume that if a writer has immense circulation, if he is enjoyed by plain persons, and if he can fill several theatres at once, he cannont possibly be worth reading and merits only indifference and disdain.