So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.

Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!

How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!

I am never indifferent, and never pretend to be, to what people say or think of my books. They are my children, and I like to have them liked.

Dreams or illusions, call them what you will, they lift us from the commonplace of life to better things.

From labor there shall come forth rest.

A great sorrow, like a mariner's quadrant, brings the sun at noon down to the horizon, and we learn where we are on the sea of life.