Be sure that you are right; and then go ahead.

there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used.

Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.

How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.

The seasons run with swift feet.

I don't so much mind the falling, but I do seem to select the hardest spots to light on.