Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.

Out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion amalgamation.

I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.

Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.

If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.