“A Word Of ThanksTo these I know a debt past telling:My several muses, harsh and kind;My folks, who stood my sulks and yelling,And (in the long run) did not mind;Dead legislators, whose orationsI've filched to mix my own potations;Indeed, all those whose brains I've pressed,Unmerciful, because obsessed;My own dumb soul, which on a pittanceSurvived to weave this fictive spell;And, gentle reader, you as well,The fountainhead of all remittance.Buy me before good sense insistsYou'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists.”

“I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine... gentle yet corageous, possesed, as a cultivated as well as a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own to aprove or amend my plans.”

“And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life-- and the friends who are about me whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence.”

“You have your whole life ahead of you," my mother told me, "don't spend all your time in the past." It's good advice, I know it is, but the past has its own ideas. It can follow you around with a life of its own, casting a long shadow.”

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,Is the immediate jewel of their souls:Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;But he that filches from me my good nameRobs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”

“A leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour!”