“What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”

“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.”

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”

“Speak on, but be not over-tedious.”

“And a man's life's no more than to say "One."”

“[S]ince brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.”

“I am not bound to please thee with my answer.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.”

“If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well. It were done quickly.”

“The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.”

“Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.”

“Improve your spare moments and they will become the brightest gems in your life.”

“Unpunctuality is a vile habit.”

“If you don't plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.”