I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.

Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.

Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

Either the human being must suffer and struggle as the price of a more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow and without intellectual revelation.