In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot belive that the soul of man shall prove the one exception

Money was their God; work their religion.

There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression.

I do not believe there is any one study that can be taken up that will broaden the imagination, that will be the source from which will spring more deep thinking and sincere research than the study of astronomy.

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.

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

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.