The Story of My Heart: An Autobiography

There is a place in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory. It is in the shape of a triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of traffic...

There were grass-grown tumuli on the hills to which of old I used to walk, sit down at the foot of one of them, and think. Some warrior had been interred there in the antehistor...

It is not possible to narrate these incidents of the mind in strict order. I must now return to a period earlier than anything already narrated, and pass in review other phases...

Sometimes I went to a deep, narrow valley in the hills, silent and solitary. The sky crossed from side to side, like a roof supported on two walls of green. Sparrows chirped in...

The story of my heart commences seventeen years ago. In the glow of youth there were times every now and then when I felt the necessity of a strong inspiration of soul-thought....

The wind sighs through the grass, sighs in the sunshine; it has drifted the butterfly eastwards along the hill. A few yards away there lies the skull of a lamb on the turf, whit...

United effort through geological time in front is but the beginning of an idea. I am convinced that much more can be done, and that the length of time may be almost immeasurably...

In human affairs everything happens by chance—that is, in defiance of human ideas, and without any direction of an intelligence. A man bathes in a pool, a crocodile seizes and l...

This our earth produces not only a sufficiency a superabundance, but in one year pours a cornucopia of good things forth, enough to fill us for many years in succession. The onl...

My strength is not enough to fulfil my desire; if I had the strength of the ocean, and of the earth, the burning vigour of the sun implanted in my limbs, it would hardly suffice...

Subtle as the mind is, it can effect little without knowledge. It cannot construct a bridge, or a building, or make a canal, or work a problem in algebra, unless it is provided...

An enumeration of the useless would almost be an enumeration of everything hitherto pursued. For instance, to go back as far as possible, the study and labour expended on Egypti...