Destitution and excessive luxury develop apparently the same ideals, the same marauding attitude towards mankind, the intensity of struggle for material goods, -- surely showing how perfect is the meeting of extremes.

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am.

The gain isn't counted to the recluse and inactive that, having nothing to measure themselves by and never being tested by failure, they simmer and soak perpetually in conscious complacency.

The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape

Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?

What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.

Though I have no productive worth, I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity.