"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

"The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse."

"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum."

"No story is the same to us after a lapse of time or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters."

"The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with."