Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular-letter to the friends of him who writes it.

Sit loosely in the saddle.

To be truly happy is a question of how we begin, and not how we end, of what we want and not what we have.

There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

The smack of California earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson.

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.

The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.