My Small Boat

On one of my birthdays I was given a toy printing-set with whose rubber letters I was able to print off my first composition. It was a story of a train going along very fast and, to the satisfaction of the passengers, racing through the samll stations along the track without stopping. Their satisfaction, however, turned to dismay, and then to panic fury, as it dawned on them that it was not going to stop at their stations either when it came to them. They raged and shouted and shook their fists, but all to no avail. The train went roaring on. At the time I had no notion what, if anything, the story signified. [...] Yet, as I came to see, and see now more clearly than ever, it is the story I have been writing ever since; the story of our time.

The world is content with setting right the surface of things.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

In separateness only does love learn definition.

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 … In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them up was a bite from a sheep.