“The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.”

“All men are enemies. All animals are comrades”

“Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

“Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.”

“To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.”

“In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.”