Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.

I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.

A friend is somebody who loves us with understanding, as well as emotion.

In the harsh face of life faith can read a bracing gospel.