“If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”

The obscurest epoch is today.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

An elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.

I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.

By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

It’s a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes.

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.