The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out.

A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.

You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others.

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other, both in mind and body.

[T]he kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if we should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.

Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful.

Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.