But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.
Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one wit...
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.
The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.
One must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad.
Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.
In the destructive element immerse.
It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped...
The sea and the sky were welded together without a joint...
How does one kill fear? ... How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?
Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.
Doomed to be the recipient of confidences...