Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep.

I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?

In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.