To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.

Sing a song of seasons; something bright in all, flowers in the summer, fires in the fall.

A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it.

You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

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 rain is falling all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea. - Rain

I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.