“Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.”

“In one sense at any rate it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men.”

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”

“Adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song.”

“Only poor men get hanged.”

“We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.”

“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ”