The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Standing by the crib of one's own baby, with that world - old pang of compassion and protectiveness toward this so little creature that has all its course to run, the heart flies back in yearning and gratitude to those who felt just so toward one's self. Then for the first time one understands the homely succession of sacrifices and pains by which life is transmitted and fostered down the stumbling generations of men.

A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it.

Everybody thinks of others as being excessively human, with all the frailties and crotchets appertaining to that curious condition. But each of us also seems to regard himself as existing on a detached plane of observation, exempt (save in moments of avid crisis) from the strange whims of humanity en masse.

God made man merely to hear some praise of what he'd done on those Five Days.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.