The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery, except in illiberal sects, that the novel is fitted both for honest use and for pleasure.

Although by 1851 tales of adventure had begun to seem antiquated, they had rendered a large service to the course of literature: they had removed the stigma, for the most part, from the word novel.

It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it.

The first writers are first and the rest, in the long run, nowhere but in anthologies.

Guy Rivers, a conventional piece as regards the love affair which makes a part of the plot, is a tale of deadly strife between the laws of Georgia and a fiendish bandit.

Yes, it's hard to write. But it's harder not to.

The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.