Now I never wrote a "good" line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old.

Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere.

Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase.

I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line.
This is the philosophy of it.

(Here the number of the company was diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.