Literature, I have always thought, is in most places and companies a singularly dull and uninteresting thing to talk about, but one may, as a rule, hate literary conversation, and yet at the right moment,...

The landscape of the mind, against which our thoughts and expectations move, when the wind of the imagination is active, changes as quickly as the clouds; and indeed it consists often of several landscapes, semi-transparent...

If a man wishes to ensure the bad opinion of others, his best course probably is to be honest about himself.

Most of man’s finest heroism is merely disguised necessity.

Was my guide a person who would expect what is vulgary called a “tip”? Or was his position so high that even to offer it would be an insult?

And with distance in time it is the same as with distance in place. The imagination has its atmosphere and its sunlight as well as the earth has; only its mists are even more gorgeous...