I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.

It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.