“A book should be luminous not voluminous.”

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man’s life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

When we get tired of enjoying all the pleasures within our reach, we have still a resource in thinking of others that are not.

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of mans redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well viewed.

The public library is more than a repository of books. It’s a mysterious, wondrous place with the power to change lives.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.