To do your own work well, whether it be for life or death.

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.

The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it.