Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.

It's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before.

If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change.

I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.