If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich.

One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

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

It is an immense loss to have all robust and sustaining expletives refined away from one! At. moments of trial refinement is a feeble reed to lean upon.

You must remember that a woman, by nature, needs much less to feed upon than a man, a few emotions and she is satisfied.

How fatally the entire want of humor cripples the mind.

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.