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

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

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.

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

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

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

Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by the way?