Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.

Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.

Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

Let me have my own way in exactly everything and a sunnier and pleasanter creature does not exist.