I never drew a picture of anything that was before me but always from fancy, a sure sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I illustrated my lack of real feeling for art by a very early speech: 'Mama,' said I, 'I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.

Anyone can carry their burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do their work, however hard, for one day.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.