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.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.

we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.

a trouble shared is a trouble half endured.

Nature always levies her tribute.

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

It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success.