Consequences are unpitying.
For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?
I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.
A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.
When it comes to the story of my heart, I am the villain, locking it away; denying its right be free. The chains are tight, restricting its growth; long enough to see through the window of opportunity, but the only escape it has, is via the pen. Why do I deny myself the opportunities? I know it comes from a place of protection, but also of fear. I think my heart has grown a resentment because of this betrayal, and has decided, enough is enough.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.
To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you can not eat.
You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.
I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.
Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.
For who is pleased with himself.
A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.
He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.
