I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation -- and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.

It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went to sea.