Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken atwill from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness.

I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.

Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all.

Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?