The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go afishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky.

Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know.

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it.

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.