Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.

If you do things by the job, you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not.

I know that unremitting attention to business is the price of success, but I don't know what success is.

Isolation breeds conceit.

Goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does out of a sweet apple roasted before the fire.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.

It is only the fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.