I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters.

Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.

A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.

Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.

Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.

Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble.