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 always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the deathbed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their...
I always found Dickens very coarse. I don't want to read about people who drop their aitches.
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 had passed his life in the pursuit of happiness, and had never learnt that happiness is best attained when it is not sought; and, moreover, is only known when it is lost. It is doubtful whether any...
Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe. The
When people say they do not care what others thing of them, for the most part they deceive themselves
When my obituary notice at last appears in The Times, and they say: ‘What, I thought he died years ago,’ my ghost will gently chuckle.
When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.
What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
What he taught was very simple. He taught that we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom. He taught that it is not essential to salvation to retire from the world, but on...
We're all so dreadfully tired of being goddesses. For centuries foolish men have set us up on a pedestal and vowed they were unworthy to touch the hem of our garments. And it is so dull.
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
We paint from within outward - if we force our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we don't it ignores us; but we are the same. We don't attach any meaning to greatness or smallness. Wh...
This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped,...
There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.
There is nothing so difficult as to persuade men that they are ignorant. Bertha, exaggerating the seriousness of the affair, thought it charlatanry to undertake a post without knowledge and without ca...
There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very lik...