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.

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

When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the blood, the joy of his fellow men.

If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.

The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard.

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

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