fishing teaches a stern morality; inculcates a remorseless honesty.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Wat a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever.

Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

I feel my brains, like a pear, to see if it's ripe; it will be exquisite by September.

If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.