The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.

Do anything, save to lie down and die!

Is it a fact-or have I dreamt it-that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?

This above all: be true, be true, be true.

Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.