There is no short-cut no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must still be trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.

Net the large fish and you are sure to have the small fry.

I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.