Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.