Honest winter, snow clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; but that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping loom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honor of May - how often has it robbed me of heart and hope.

To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.

Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.

The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.

I am much better employed from every point of view, when I live solely for my own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world. The world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything.

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?