If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must first make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning.

What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.

Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability?

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.