A child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.

Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child.

Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.

I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me.

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.