I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experienc...
I wasn't frightened for myself; I was indignant; it was the wickedness of it that broke me.
I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,' he said himself. 'What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed...
I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such...
I HAVE NEVER BEGUN a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don’t know what else to call it.
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue;
He knew that she had been dreaming that night and he knew what her dreams were about. She had forgotten them. He forebode to look at her. It gave him a grim, horrible, and rather uncanny sensation to...
Genius is a word that is very loosely used nowadays. It is ascribed to persons to whom a more sober judgement would be satisfied to allow talent. Genius and talent are very different things. Many peop...
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?No. He hesitated and his voice was strange. I despise myself.
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it...
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
The sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense he saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the first time that he had ex...
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
The gardener, an old sailor, made him a hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to the vicarage, reading,...
Going about with a huge, heavy arm or dragging along a grossly disfigured leg. Men and women wore the lava-lava. It’s a very indecent costume, said Mrs. Davidson. Mr. Davidson thinks it should be proh...
[Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would...
You should read Spanish,' he said. 'It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian--Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders--but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like...
You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.