The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.

The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.

It must be less wicked to love the wrong person than not to love anybody at all.

It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.