I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

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.

A doctrine of endurance flows easily from our lips when we are enduring jam and our neighbors dry bread, and it is still possible for us to become resigned to the afflictions of our brother.

You look as if you had lived on duty and it hadn't agreed with you.

I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.

One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.