[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.

I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.

When the desire is on for one particular person, nobody else will do.

There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him; or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.

Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.

Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.