What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offense. ... Everyone who contributes to the 'too much' of literature is doing grave social injury.

How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true - the religion that is strength to the healthy - is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.

Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.