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

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.

If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply.

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

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 attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away.