It is only unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the world.

Life was resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to happiness.

Such a nice day - out all day up in the Carter Notch direction, trout-fishing, with the long drive there and the long drive home again in time for supper. It was a lovely brook and I caught seven good trout and one small one - which eight trout-persons you should have for your breakfast if only you were near enough. It was not alone the fishing, but the delightful loneliness and being out of doors.

It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence.

It is only unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the world.

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.