I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

Am I solemn? I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." "You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or a funeral. If that's a grin your ears are very near together." "Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" "Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It'll pay the expenses of our journey.

..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.

if you are going to be pushed you had better jump

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.