Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

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.

If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.

I consider the success of my day based on the seeds I sow, not the harvest I reap.

When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind.