“I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.”

“The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.”

“They ended up at the Old Corner Bookstore, which Brian had read about in a tour guide to Boston. "Longfellow and Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes used to read here. Let's go in." Brian nudged the girls until they obeyed.It was a regular bookstore, less history-minded than Brian had expected. In fact, the local history shelves were quite mangeable. I'll buy one book, he thought. This will get me launched in actual reading. Out of the zillions of choices, I'll find one here.Brian picked out Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. It was thick and somehow exciting, with its chapter headings and scholarly notes and bibliography.”

“When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.”

“We must think things not words or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand if we are to keep to the real and the true.”

“Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.”

“When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.”

“Man has his will - but woman has her way.”

“Don't be consistent but be simply true.”

“Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.”

“Life is a great bundle of little things.”