“Write about winter in the summer.”

The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

You can’t test courage cautiously.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.

Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

The dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

Adverbs are a sign that you’ve used the wrong verb.

You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work.

We live in all we seek.

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time – give it, give it all, give it now.

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.

I like my soul when it touches yours; winter turns to summer and my nightmares become dreams.

Summer winter or rain; nothing should come in between your aim.

What is more gentle than a wind is summer?

You are summer to my winter heart.

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!

It’s a magical way to spend a summer – privacy at sea, and fun and friends in port.