Society and the World

A book should serve as an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.

The book is the most efficient technological instrument for learning that has ever been devised by the human mind.

To read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which these authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts.

My own education operated by a succession of eye-openers each involving the repudiation of some previously held belief.

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

All zeal for a reform that gives offense To peace and charity, is mere pretense.

The human baby . . . is a mosaic of animal and angel.

could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Dear authors! Suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; Nor lift your load, before you’re quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

It isn’t what a man has that constitutes wealth. No—it is to be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth.