I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.

She knew that she belonged to this man, body and soul. Every trace of shame departed; it was burnt out by the fire that consumed her. She gave him a thousand opportunities; she fought to turn his words to serious things. He baffled her with his shallow smile and ready tongue, that twisted all topics to triviality. By six o'clock she was morally on her knees before him; she was imploring him to stay to dinner with her. He refused.

Initiation means the Journey Inwards: nothing is changed or can be changed; but all is trulier understood with every step.

They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.