Real human writing, free to copy.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This above all: to thine own self be true;And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

All children, except one, grow up.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of Being and ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday’sMost quiet need, by sun and candlelight.I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,When all at once I saw a crowdA host of dancing Daffodills;Along the Lake, beneath the trees,Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.The waves beside them danced, but theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee:—A Poet could not but be gayIn such a laughing company:I gaz'd—and gaz'd—but little thoughtWhat wealth the shew to me had brought:For oft when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude,And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the Daffodils.

We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

The morns are meeker than they were,The nuts are getting brown;The berry's cheek is plumper,The rose is out of town.The maple wears a gayer scarf,The field a scarlet gown.Lest I should be old-fashioned,I'll put a trinket on.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And auld lang syne!Chorus.—For auld lang syne, my dear,For auld lang syne.We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,For auld lang syne.

May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.

It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

OUT of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.I 've heard it in the chillest land,And on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in extremity,It asked a crumb of me.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.For he today that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition;And gentlemen in England now abedShall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

For aught that I could ever read,Could ever hear by tale or history,The course of true love never did run smooth.

If music be the food of love, play on,Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken and so die.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with night,And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,Nor the furious winter’s rages;Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.Golden lads and girls all must,As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat,And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant never taste of death but once.

How far that little candle throws his beams!So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

I can no other answer make but thanks,And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turnsAre shuffled off with such uncurrent pay.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,Doubt that the sun doth move,Doubt truth to be a liar,But never doubt I love.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,That can sing both high and low.Trip no further, pretty sweeting.Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.

What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet;So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,Retain that dear perfection which he owesWithout that title.

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrowThat I shall say good night till it be morrow.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this son of York;And all the clouds that loured upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you.

I count myself in nothing else so happyAs in a soul rememb’ring my good friends;And as my fortune ripens with thy love,It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.

O brave new worldThat has such people in ’t!

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle’s compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me prov’d,I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying:And this same flower that smiles to-dayTo-morrow will be dying.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,And I will pledge with mine;Or leave a kiss but in the cupAnd I’ll not look for wine.The thirst that from the soul doth riseDoth ask a drink divine;But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,I would not change for thine.

Come live with me and be my Love,And we will all the pleasures proveThat hills and valleys, dales and fieldsOr woods or steepy mountain yields.

She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes:Thus mellow’d to that tender lightWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.

O my Luve’s like a red, red roseThat’s newly sprung in June:O my Luve’s like the melodieThat’s sweetly play’d in tune!As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,So deep in luve am I:And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a’ the seas gang dry:Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;I will luve thee still, my dear,While the sands o’ life shall run.And fare thee weel, my only Luve,And fare thee weel a while!And I will come again, my Luve,Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,Jumping from the chair she sat in;Time, you thief, who love to getSweets into your list, put that in!Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,Say I’m growing old, but add,Jenny kiss’d me.

Remember me when I am gone away,Gone far away into the silent land;When you can no more hold me by the hand,Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.Remember me when no more day by dayYou tell me of our future that you plann’d:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.

My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water’d shoot;My heart is like an apple-treeWhose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;My heart is like a rainbow shellThat paddles in a halcyon sea;My heart is gladder than all these,Because my love is come to me.

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;And soonest our best men with thee do go—Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;And poppy or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:

Stone walls do not a prison make,Nor iron bars a cage;Minds innocent and quiet takeThat for an hermitage;If I have freedom in my loveAnd in my soul am free,Angels alone, that soar above,Enjoy such liberty.

Say not the struggle naught availeth,The labour and the wounds are vain,The enemy faints not, nor faileth,And as things have been they remain.If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,And, but for you, possess the field.For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,Seem here no painful inch to gain,Far back, through creeks and inlets making,Comes silent, flooding in, the main.And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light;In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!But westward, look, the land is bright!

Under the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie:Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he long’d to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,And the hunter home from the hill.

Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory;Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.

It is not growing like a treeIn bulk, doth make man better be;Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:A lily of a dayIs fairer far in May,Although it fall and die that night;It was the plant and flower of light.In small proportions we just beauties see;And in short measures, life may perfect be.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

O to be in EnglandNow that April’s there,And whoever wakes in EnglandSees, some morning, unaware,That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheafRound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,While the chaffinch sings on the orchard boughIn England—now!

No coward soul is mine,No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:I see Heaven’s glories shine,And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,And evening full of the linnet’s wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Tiger, tiger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?

I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but no one with such justice.

My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.

Till this moment, I never knew myself.

I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it.”

My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world."

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"—which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket"

This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I can resist everything except temptation.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

You don’t seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Things do not change; we change.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

All mankind love a lover.

To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Work is love made visible.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world.

It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.”

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead.

Housekeeping ain’t no joke.

Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault

There is always light behind the clouds.

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!

The world has held great Heroes,As history-books have showed;But never a name to go down to fameCompared with that of Toad!

You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,‘To talk of many things:Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—Of cabbages—and kings—And why the sea is boiling hot—And whether pigs have wings.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Where you tend a rose, my lad,A thistle cannot grow.

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up there will be you.

Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one’s own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one’s self

Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps. To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life.

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.

It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, not storming and attacking but patience and time are wanted.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

What a lark! What a plunge!

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

Reader, I married him.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,Healthy, free, the world before me,The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,Strong and content I travel the open road.

Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,You must travel it for yourself.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,Missing me one place search another,I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.

There is no frigate like a bookTo take us lands away,Nor any coursers like a pageOf prancing poetry.This traverse may the poorest takeWithout oppress of toll;How frugal is the chariotThat bears a human soul!

If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain;If I can ease one life the aching,Or cool one pain,Or help one fainting robinUnto his nest again,I shall not live in vain.

The bustle in a houseThe morning after deathIs solemnest of industriesEnacted upon earth, —The sweeping up the heart,And putting love awayWe shall not want to use againUntil eternity.

Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne'er succeed.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —One clover, and a bee,And revery.The revery alone will doIf bees are few.

I never saw a moor,I never saw the sea;Yet know I how the heather looks,And what a wave must be.I never spoke with God,Nor visited in heaven;Yet certain am I of the spotAs if the chart were given.

’Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light:The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true.

I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?Yes, to the very end.Will the day's journey take the whole long day?From morn to night, my friend.

Time isToo Slow for those who Wait,Too Swift for those who Fear,Too Long for those who Grieve,Too Short for those who Rejoice;But for those who Love,Time is not.

Four things a man must learn to doIf he would make his record true:To think without confusion clearly;To love his fellow-men sincerely;To act from honest motives purely;To trust in God and Heaven securely.

Let me but do my work from day to day,In field or forest, at the desk or loom,In roaring market-place or tranquil room;Let me but find it in my heart to say,When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;"Of all who live, I am the one by whom"This work can best be done in the right way."Then shall I see it not too great, nor small,To suit my spirit and to prove my powers;Then shall I cheerful greet the labouring hours,And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fallAt eventide, to play and love and rest,Because I know for me my work is best.

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat:They took some honey, and plenty of moneyWrapped up in a five-pound note.The Owl looked up to the stars above,And sang to a small guitar,"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,What a beautiful Pussy you are,You are,You are!What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

They dined on mince and slices of quince,Which they ate with a runcible spoon;And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,They danced by the light of the moon,The moon,The moon,They danced by the light of the moon.

Life has loveliness to sell,All beautiful and splendid things,Blue waves whitened on a cliff,Soaring fire that sways and sings,And children's faces looking upHolding wonder like a cup.

Spend all you have for loveliness,Buy it and never count the cost;For one white singing hour of peaceCount many a year of strife well lost,And for a breath of ecstasyGive all you have been, or could be.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;Robins will wear their feathery fireWhistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know of the war, not oneWill care at last when it is done.Not one would mind, neither bird nor treeIf mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;—Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us, then, be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.

I shot an arrow into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For, so swiftly it flew, the sightCould not follow it in its flight.I breathed a song into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For who has sight so keen and strong,That it can follow the flight of song?Long, long afterward, in an oakI found the arrow, still unbroke;And the song, from beginning to end,I found again in the heart of a friend.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;Thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall,Some days must be dark and dreary.

The heights by great men reached and keptWere not attained by sudden flight,But they, while their companions slept,Were toiling upward in the night.

I heard the bells on Christmas DayTheir old, familiar carols play,And wild and sweetThe words repeatOf peace on earth, good-will to men!

John Anderson, my jo, John,When we were first acquent;Your locks were like the raven,Your bonie brow was brent;But now your brow is beld, John,Your locks are like the snaw;But blessings on your frosty pow,John Anderson, my jo.

In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.

The world is so full of a number of things,I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

It is very nice to thinkThe world is full of meat and drink,With little children saying graceIn every Christian kind of place.

Where did you come from, baby dear?Out of the everywhere into here.

You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then. You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you. In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived. In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.

You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action— Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience.

For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength.

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step.

He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent.

You see, but you do not observe.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.”

Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.

BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters.

BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.

ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

AGE, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.

QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

The dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers.

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.

The fountains mingle with the riverAnd the rivers with the ocean,The winds of heaven mix for everWith a sweet emotion;Nothing in the world is single,All things by a law divineIn one another's being mingle—Why not I with thine?See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the waves clasp one another;No sister-flower would be forgivenIf it disdain'd its brother:And the sunlight clasps the earth,And the moonbeams kiss the sea—What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?

If thou must love me, let it be for noughtExcept for love’s sake only. Do not say“I love her for her smile—her look—her wayOf speaking gently,—for a trick of thoughtThat falls in well with mine, and certes broughtA sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—For these things in themselves, Belovëd, mayBe changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,May be unwrought so. Neither love me forThine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!But love me for love’s sake, that evermoreThou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,The bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

The time draws near the birth of Christ:The moon is hid; the night is still;The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist.Four voices of four hamlets round,From far and near, on mead and moor,Swell out and fail, as if a doorWere shut between me and the sound:Each voice four changes on the wind,That now dilate, and now decrease,Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble softThe red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s beingThou from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thouWho chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odours plain and hill;Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!

I saw old Autumn in the misty mornStand shadowless like Silence, listeningTo silence, for no lonely bird would singInto his hollow ear from woods forlorn,Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;—Shaking his languid locks all dewy brightWith tangled gossamer that fell by night,Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

October was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry-trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.

Besides the autumn poets sing,A few prosaic daysA little this side of the snowAnd that side of the haze.A few incisive mornings,A few ascetic eyes, —Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.Still is the bustle in the brook,Sealed are the spicy valves;Mesmeric fingers softly touchThe eyes of many elves.Perhaps a squirrel may remain,My sentiments to share.Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,Thy windy will to bear!

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.