Canada was settled in the main by people with a lower middle-class outlook and a respect rather than an affectionate familiarity for the things of the mind.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

Only in war does the madman become sane.

NOTHING IS GREATER THAN ITS SOURCE

And I loved this moment for all it's pain...We seemed for a moment like two parts of the same thing.

If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.

The working class has been turned into a consuming class - a situation has been created where people value their worth by what they can afford.

Nobody took me too seriously but I was grown up even as a baby.

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded.

I think we're going a bit too fast at the minute. The rate we're going is like we're going over the edge of the hill.

He is strong, and lithe, and certain. And he is mine.

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.