To teach one's self is to be forced to learn twice.

"I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things that I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember."

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

"No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book."

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.