I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.
One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.
All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he does not.
I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; …they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; …those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last-the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them-and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, …a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.
The reason why men do not obey us is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.
She stepped out barefoot on to the grass, her soul naked, sun beating to her heart’s rhythm, bathing her skin. In her mind, she had already escaped.
Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.
Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
