Of two evils, I always choose the lesser.

The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.

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.

Sometimes it seems to me that the more we get hurt in this world the decenter it makes us.

What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?

no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.