It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.