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.

He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it, that counted - and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

There is a terrible loneliness in the spring.

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

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

I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say.

After all, you can't expect men not to judge by appearances.