For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

We lived within two hundred yards of the sea, and its voice was in our ears night and day.

Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped – to reach it.

Motherhood is, after all, woman‘s great and incomparable work.

Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals, the human soul look out upon me.

I was in the Square at the time. The crowd was a most good-humoured, easy going, smiling crowd; but presently it was transformed. A regiment of mounted police came cantering up.

What is the good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so that your daily labor shall be itself a joy.

And where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds came to listen with serious and sympathetic mien.

With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.

Remember, the serpent is still living in the Garden of Eden. Only the heterosexual couple was expelled.

Making a choice is like backing a horse – in a hundred years, they may decide you picked wrongly.

Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever written.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don’t know exactly why I didn’t.

Where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds come to listen with serious and sympathetic men.

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!

Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.

The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau’s Walden.

The general fact of surplus value, namely that the workmen does not get the full value of his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist, is obvious.