The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub.

I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what 1 find.

Each man reserves to himself alone the right of being tedious.

Shallow men believe in luck... Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The secret of the world is the tie between person and event. Person makes event and event person.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.