The best way to learn to write is to write. Herbert Spencer never studied grammar until he had learned to write. He took his grammar at sixty, which is a good age for one to begin this most interesting study, as by the time you have reached that age you have largely lost your capacity […]

They are but few and meanspirited that live in peace with all men. –Tale of a Tub Birrell, the great English essayist, remarks that, “Of writing books about Dean Swift there is no end.” The reason is plain: of no other prominent writer who has lived during the past two hundred years do we know […]

I believe that these works of Turner’s are at theirfirst appearing as perfect as those of Phidias orLeonardo, that is to say, incapable of any improvementconceivable by human mind. —John Ruskin The beauty of the upper Thames with its fairy house-boats and green banks has been sung by poets, but rash is the minstrel who […]

As the aloe is said to flower only once in a hundred years, so it seems to be but once in a thousand years that Nature blossoms into this unrivaled product and produces such a man as we have here. –Gladstone, “Lecture on Homer” American travelers in England are said to accumulate sometimes large and […]

Put roses in their hair, put precious stones on their breasts; see that they are clothed in purple and scarlet, with other delights; that they also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky; and upon the earth be taught not only the labors of it but the loveliness. —Deucalion At Windermere, a good […]

The mind can not conceive what man will do in theTwentieth Century with his chained lightning.—Thomas A. Edison Some years ago, a law was passed out in Ohio, making any man ineligible to act as a magistrate who had not studied law and been duly admitted to the bar. Men who had not studied law […]

Jarvis: A few of our usual cards of compliments–that’s all. This bill from your tailor; this from your mercer; and this from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed. Honeydew: But I am sure we were at a […]

I hope for the enlargement of my mind, and for the improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection. God bless you all! –Pickwick The path of progress […]

TO MR. BROOKFIELDSeptember 16, 1849 Have you read Dickens? Oh, it is charming! Brave Dickens!“David Copperfield” has some of his prettiest touches,and the reading of the book has done another author agreat deal of good. –W.M.T. There are certain good old ladies in every community who wear perennial mourning. They attend every funeral, carrying black-bordered […]

Even such a shell the universe itselfIs to the ear of Faith; and there are times,I doubt not, when to you it doth impartAuthentic tidings of invisible things;Of ebb and flow and ever-during power;And central peace subsisting at the heartOf endless agitation. Here you stand,Adore and worship, when you know it not;Pious beyond the intention […]

My life is but a working-day,Whose tasks are set aright:A while to work, a while to pray,And then a quiet night.And then, please God, a quiet nightWhere Saints and Angels walk in white.One dreamless sleep from work and sorrow,But reawakening on the morrow. —In Patience As a study in heredity, the Rossetti family is most […]

I was not surprised, when I went down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night, and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar woman and […]

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow. –Life’s Uses I believe it was Thackeray who once expressed a regret that Harriet Martineau had not shown better judgment in choosing her parents. She was […]

To me remains nor place nor time;My country is in every clime;I can be calm and free from care,On any shore, since God is there. While place we seek or place we shun,The soul finds happiness in none;But with a God to guide our way,‘Tis equal joy to go or stay. Could I be cast […]

I have been in the meadows all the day,And gathered there the nosegay that you see;Singing within myself as bird or beeWhen such do fieldwork on a morn of May. Irreparableness Writers of biography usually begin their preachments with the rather startling statement, “The subject of this memoir was born”—-Here follows a date, the name […]

BERT HUBBARD We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread and that is to be done strenuously, other work to do for our delight and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done […]

You have met General Bonaparte in my house. Well–he it is who would supply a father’s place to the orphans of Alexander de Beauharnais, and a husband’s to his widow. I admire the General’s courage, the extent of his information, for on all subjects he talks equally well, and the quickness of his judgment, which […]

Delaford is a nice place I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice, old-fashioned place, full of comforts, quite shut in with great garden-walls that are covered with fruit-trees, and such a mulberry-tree in the corner. Then there is a dovecote, some delightful fish-ponds, and a very pretty canal, and everything, in short, […]

Her education in youth was not much attended to, and she happily missed all the train of female garniture which passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or providence, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair […]

When thee builds a prison, thee had better build with the thought ever in thy mind that thee and thy children may occupy the cells. —Report on Paris Prisons, Addressed to the King of France The Mennonite, Dunkard, Shaker, Oneida Communist, Mormon and Quaker are all one people, varying only according to environment. They are […]