We are prisoners of ideas.
In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.
How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.
There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.
An empire is an immense egotism.
There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.
Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?
Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage.
To choose time is to save time.
We acquire the strength we have overcome.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
If people misunderstand you, do not worry…it is your voice that they hear, but what goes through their mind is…their own thoughts.
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.
Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.
Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: -in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.
You are alive, so be fully alive.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
