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.

I don't like human nature, but I do like human beings.

Surely the novel should be a form of art - but art was not enough. It must contain not only the perfection of art, but the imperfection of nature.

Give the young half a chance and they will create their own future, they will even create their own heaven and earth.

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

1. Always wait between books for the springs to fill up and flow over. 2. Always preserve within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries. 3. Always, and as far as it is possible, endeavor to touch life on every side; but keep the central vision of the mind, the inmost light, untouched and untouchable.

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'.