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

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

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

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.