Selma Lagerlof quotes:

it is not a good omen to meet a lot of cats when one sets out on a journey, so the Lieutenant spat three times for each cat, as his mother had taught him to do ...

For, so long as there are interesting books to read, it seems to me that neither I nor anyone else, for that matter, need be unhappy.

I thought of my father and felt a deep sorrow that he should no longer be alive, and that I could not go to him and tell him that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that no one would have been happier than he to hear this.

Anyone who has ever sat in a train as it rushes through a dark night will know that sometimes there are long minutes when the coaches slide smoothly along without so much as a shudder.

I had become shy of life's bustle in my solitary retreat and was apprehensive at the thought of facing the world.