Others

O, well it has been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak!

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability.

Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

In my childhood I demurred to the description of a certain young lady as "the pretty Miss So and So." My aunt rebuked me by saying "Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty."

If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

The North American Indian was a type of the sportsman warrior gentleman. The Periclean Athenian was a type of the intellectually and artistically cultivated gentleman. Both were political failures. The modern gentleman, without the hardihood of the one or the culture of the other, has the appetite of both put together. He will not succeed where they failed.

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.

Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.

The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.

If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him.

Greatness is the secular name for Divinity: both mean simply what lies beyond us.

Your word can never be as good as your bond, because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor.

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

IF BOOKS ARE NOT GOOD COMPANY, WHERE WILL I FIND IT?

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalogue than nothing at all.

A BOOK IS A FRAGILE CREATURE, IT SUFFERS THE WEAR OF TIME, IT FEARS RODENTS, THE ELEMENTS, CLUMSY HANDS.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.