You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with.

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.