All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.

It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.

I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties.

I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train.

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.