The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.

To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition.

To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.

To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.