Youth now flees on feathered foot. - Robert Louis Stevenson

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.

Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.