She wore a wreath of roses, The night that first we met.

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Prolonged absence makes the heart forget.

Friends depart, and memory takes them To her caverns, pure and deep.

I'd be a butterfly; living a rover, Dying when fair things are fading away.

Fear not, but trust in Providence, Wherever thou may'st be.

The rose that all are praising Is not the rose for me.

I'm saddest when I sing.

Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, Long, long ago, long, long ago.

Oh! where do fairies hide their heads, When snow lies on the hills, When frost has spoiled their mossy beds, And crystallized their rills?

Why don't the men propose, Mamma? Why don't the men propose?

And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.

Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk.

Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.

I think of myself now as a writer, although I wouldn't go as far as to say 'novelist' because that sounds like a Victorian person.

Those who give up cigarette smoking aren't the heroes. The real heroes are the rest of us - who have to listen to them.

Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.

Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

Unfortunately most accidents are preventable. Planes don't fall out of the sky unless something is wrong.

I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.