No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.

When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.

Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory.

When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding. I went crazy over the outdoor work, and at last had to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.

Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.