The ocean moans over dead men’s bones.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can’t find a parent who will admit that it is his child.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the...

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.

Books that have become classics – books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal – always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age...

Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his...

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

Civilization is the lamb’s skin in which barbarism masquerades.

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird’s throat; Since Eden’s freshness and man’s fall No rose has been original.