... there are few things that can reconcile us fully to our parting with a world of which the longest life can see so little and whose beauties have so extraordinary a variety.

Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.

Words are the only arteries of thought our poor human body possesses.

Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions.

It is better to be passionate than to be tolerant at the expense of one's soul.

The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people's directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues.

Risk is the salt and sugar of life.