I wish there could be an international peace conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no small measure on them and on the librarians.

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump.

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.