“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the me...”

“The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I ...”

“Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very he...”

“What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.”

“Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.”

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextingu...”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, for knowledge, and even beauty is only a vein sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of ones clo...”

“It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring fro...”