Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.

Writing is still like heaving bricks over a wall.