The more developed sexual passion, in both sexes, is very largely an emotion of power, domination, or appropriation. There is no state of feeling that says mine, mine, more fiercely.

We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

To retire to the monastery, or the woods, or the sea, is to escape from the sharp suggestions that spur on ambition.

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.