“The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.”

“It is always more pleasant to meet with one who is a bookman than with one who is not.”

“I liked the company of most of my colleagues, who were about equally divided among good men who were good teachers, awful men who were awful teachers, and the grotesques and misfits who drift into teaching and are so often the most educative influences a boy meets in school. If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher.”

“To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.”

“A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the body.From the abundance of it flows a benign benevolence.”

“There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.”

“Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence, or learning.”