“ I own allegiance to an empire beside all that--another Forest of Arden--the tinkle of whose laughter is a permanent sustained accompaniment to the more significant notes of man's sober industries.
Must I be dubbed trifler then, because I make a game of life? Every man of spirit and imagination must, I think, be a true sportsman. It is in the blood of genius to love play for its own sake, and whether one uses one's skill on thrones or women, swords or pens, gold or fame, the game's the thing! ”

“ Surely the modern invention that has done most to perpetuate Romance is the telephone. The man that, however used to this machine, can take up its ear-piece without a thrill of wonder has no soul. The locomotive, the steamship, the automobile have but made travel a bit more rapid, they have added no new element of mystery. Even the telegraph fails to give any true feeling of surprise. It is no whit more wonderful than that one, after writing a letter and slipping it into a red mail-box, should be handed a reply by a strange, blue-clad gentleman, after many days. ”

“ We do not, it is true, delight in the flaw in the diamond, but elsewhere we are in perpetual conflict with nature, whose sole object seems to be the obliteration of extremes and the ultimate establishment of a happy medium of uniformity. We find perfection cold and lifeless in the human face. I doubt if a woman has ever been loved for an absolute regularity of feature; but how many, like little Celestine, who acknowledges herself that her nose is too crooked, her eyes too hazel, and her mouth too large, are bewilderingly charming on that very account! ”

“ The fire seems immortal; though the coals fade into ashes, the morning's resurrection seems to continue the same personality, and the same flames seem to be incarnated--living again the same old life. But the life of a candle seems visibly limited to a definite space of time, and its end is clearly to be seen. In that aspect it seems more human and lovable than the fire--a candle is more like a petted animal, whose short life seems to lead to nothing beyond. We may put more coals on the fire, and continue its existence indefinitely, but the candle is doomed. ”

“ If a letter of praise, of compliment, or even of deliberate flattery, is made decently interesting, if it is not too grossly cloying even for private perusal, it cannot fail to count. It has to be paid for by no blush, no awkward moment, no painful conspicuous self-consciousness, no hypocritical denial. It strikes an undefending victim, and brings him down without a struggle. Such tributes of praise can be read and reread without mortification. It is a sweet-smelling incense that burns perpetually before the shrine of vanity. ”

“ What, then, is it that makes this mythical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life. Whether one makes for the larger freedom of the hills, or loses one's self in the sacred stillness of the forest, the way is open to endeavour wherever one wills. ”

“ The joy in the taste of the fresh apple under the tongue, or in the abandon of the child at play, in the strength of youth and the grace of women,--this is a joy that does not fade; no, not even for those who would not trouble to go to the window if the king rode by! As a man can learn much by travel without losing his capacity for enjoying his native town, so one can enjoy life intellectually to the utmost without ever losing one's grasp on one's self, without being intoxicated by excitement or blinded by egoism, and yet feel still the clean, sane joys of youth to the last. ”

“ Separated by great space, he is, in a way, separated by time also, and he sees what another generation will perhaps see in the history of today. For he watches not only literary London, that tiniest and most garrulous of gossiping villages, but a dozen other hives of thought as well, and from his very distance can the more easily discern the first signs of pre-eminence. His ears are not ringing with a myriad petty clamours, but he can hear, rising above the multitudinous hum, the voice of those who sing clearest. ”

“ Surely there is no humour in insensate nature, as there is little enough in Art and Music. The bees, the trees, the fountains and the mountains take themselves seriously enough, and though, according to the minor poets, the fields and the brooks are at times moved to laughter, it is from a vegetable, pointless joy of life. Through the human wit alone, and that too rarely, the rays of thought are refracted in the angle of mirth, and split into whimsical rays of complementary sensations and contrasts. ”

“ Here is the Forest of Arden, whose greenwood holds a noble fellowship, bound in truth and human simplicity. It is a little golden world apart, and though it is the most secret, it is the most accessible of refugees, so that there are never too many there, and never too few. Here is spoken a universal language, Nature's own speech, the native dialect of the heart. Men come and go from this bright country, but once having been free of the wood, you are of the Brotherhood and recognize your fellows by instinct, and know them, as they know you, for what you are. ”

“ Fancy creates; imagination constructs. The child, sporting ingenuously with both these powers, dwells in a world of his own, either induced by his mastering fiat, or remodelled nearer to his heart's desire from the rags and fragments at hand. In his toy theatre alone is the perfect play produced, for there imagination is stage manager, and has the hosts of Wonderland in his cast. The child is the only perfect romanticist. He has the keen, fresh eye upon nature; all is play, and the critical faculty is not yet aroused. So in a way, too, was all primitive drama. ”

“ The Diary Habit
For seven years I have kept my diary scrupulously, without missing a day, and now, at the beginning of a new twelvemonth, I am wondering whether I should maintain or renounce it. There are certain good habits, it would seem, as hard to break as bad ones, and if the practice of keeping a daily journal is a praiseworthy one, it derives no little of its virtue from sheer inertia. The half-filled book tempts one on; there is a pleasure in seeing the progress of the volume, leaf by leaf; like sentimental misers, we hoard our store of memories. ”

“ Not the last stroke, but every stroke brings victory! It is like the climbing of a mountain. Do we endure the toil merely for the sake of the view at the summit? No, but for the primitive passion of conflict, the inch-by-inch fight against odds, the heaping of endeavour on endeavour, the continual measuring of what has been done with what remains to do. The finishing climax is but the exclamation point at the end of the sentence--most of the sensation has been used up before we come to the full stop, and that point serves but to sum up our emotion in a visible emblem of success. ”

“ We cannot all mount those heights from whose crest one may look over the Sea of Care, past the Isle of Idleness to the Adventurous Main, but there is joy enough on the lowland. Happy indeed is he who, in his journey of life, has escaped the perils of that false Bohemia, crouching on the frontier, and has found his way to the happy forest, met his own people and drunk of the Fountain of Immortal Youth; for there is the warm, beating, human heart of the True Bohemia! ”

“ A little duck laid gently across the grate, the kettle whistling with steam, and the coffee-pot ready--what bachelor was ever attended by more charming handmaiden than I by my little open fire? She will heat an iron or shaving-water as gracefully, too, waiting upon me with a jocund willingness. No servant could be so companionable. Still, she must be humoured as one must always humour a woman. Try to drive her, or make her feel that she is but a slave, and you shall see how quickly she resents it. There is a psychological moment for broiling on an open fire, and postponement is fatal. ”

“ And in addition to gaining all this experience that trained the pioneers of old, he has, while living at the confines of civilization, kept in touch with the world, and has tasted the exhilarating flavour of the old and new in one mouthful. For, in this century, distance is swept away and no land is really isolate. The pioneer lives like a god above distinctions of time, at once in the past, the present and the future. ”

“ There are some, maybe, who do not dream, poor half-made men and women, to whom a waking, literal prosaic life is the whole of existence. They stay idly at home, while you and I take ship upon the Unknown Sea and navigate uncharted waters every night. Then we are poets, dunces, philosophers, clowns or madcaps of sorts in a secret carnival, changing not only our costumes, but often our very selves, doffing conscience, habit and taste, to play a new part at each performance. ”

“ Acting is at best a secondary art--an art, that is, of interpretation, though we as critics judge it of itself alone. But, to an idealist, no play ever is, or can be, perfectly performed. As we accept the conventions of stage carpentry, impossible cottages, flat trees, "property" rocks, misfit costumes and tinsel ornament, so we must gloss over the imperfections of the players, and accept their struttings and mouthings as the fantastic accessories of stage-land. No actor that ever lived ever acted throughout a whole drama as a sane human being would act. ”

“ There are no superfluous words, for the master strikes a clean sharp blow, forging his mood all of a single piece, welding your whim to his, and, fusing his sentences, there glows a spirit, a quality of style that bears no affectation; it must not, of all things, become literary, it must be direct, not showing signs of operose polish. It must be writ in the native dialect of the heart.
If it be a risk to write frankly, it is one that gains interest in the same proportion; it makes the game the better sport. ”

“ What is a parting from a friend but a departure in quest of new experience? Each fresh meeting, therefore, should be the sharing of the fruits that both have gathered, that each may profit by the contribution. If you tell me of a book you have read, I am amused and profited by the knowledge you bring me; shall I not be grateful to you for what you bring from an interesting person? If every new friend contributes to our development and enriches us by his personality, not only are we the better for it ourselves, but more worth while to our friends. ”

“ For, to the initiate, his own inconsistencies and indiscretions are no less diverting than those of his associates, and should frequently give rise to emotions that impel him to hurry into a corner and scream aloud with mirth. It is ever the situation that is absurd, and never the victim; and in this lies the secret of his ability to appreciate a farce of which he himself is the hero. He must disincarnate himself as the whim blows, and hang in the air, a god for the time, gazing with amusement at the play of his own ridiculous failures. ”

“ Within Bohemia are many lesser states, and these I have roughly charted on my travels, so that, though I may have left some precincts unexplored, I know at least that these territories lying on my map are veritable provinces of this land of freedom and sincerity. On the shore of the magic Sea of Dreams, beyond whose horizon dances the Adventurous Main, lies the Pays de la Jeunesse, the country of Youth and Romance, a joyous plaisaunce free from care or caution, whose green, wide fields lie bathed in glamorous sunshine. ”

“ Time was when we made our own toys; when a piece of twine, a spool, a few nails and a bit of imagination could keep us busy and happy all day long. There were no new-fangled iron toys "made in Germany," so tiresome in their inevitable little routine of performance, so easily got out of order, and so hard, metallic and realistic as to be hardly worth the purchase. A penny would, indeed, buy some funny carved wooden thing that aroused a half-hour's excitement, but it was never quite so alluring as when in the front window of the toy-shop. ”