To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.

Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

Unless you catch ideas on the wing and nail them down, you will soon cease to have any.

My notion's to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of themselves.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover seeds of truth.

Like all very handsome men who die tragically, he left not so much a character behind him as a legend. Youth and death shed a halo through which it is difficult to see a real face.