"I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann. (...) That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write whether I have profited or not, that is the way."

“For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.”

“Nothing like a little judicious levity.”

“To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.”

“The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.”

“Sanity itself is a kind of convention.”

“The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances. To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour.”