Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow,--whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.

Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep; we are on the death-bed.

Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.

The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.