What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself.

I have no wish to talk nonsense." "If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.

You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.

There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms.

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.

You are human and fallible.

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.