After a day of rain the sun came out suddenly at five o'clock and threw a golden bar into the deep Victorian gloom of the front parlour

the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time.

I have watchedmany literary fashions shoot up and blossom, and then fade and drop.... Yet with the many that I have seen comeand go, I have never yet encountered a mode of thinking that regarded itself as simply a changing fashion, and not as an infallible approach to the right culture.

It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.

The pathos of life is worse than the tragedy.

I waited and worked, and watched the inferior exalted for nearly thirty years; and when recognition came at last, it was too late to alter events, or to make a difference in living.

there are times when life surprises one, and anything may happen, even what one had hoped for.