I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself.

But, especially in love, only counterfeit emotions exist nowadays. We have all been taught to mistrust everybody emotionally, from parents downwards, or upwards. Don’t trust anybody with your real emotions: if you’ve got any: that is the slogan of today. Trust them with your money, even, but never with your feelings. They are bound to trample on them.

Let there be an end ... of all this welter of pity, which is only self-pity reflected onto some obvious surface.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

The trains roared by like projectiles level on the darkness, fuming and burning, making the valley clang with their passage. They were gone, and the lights of the towns and villages glittered in silence.

I should like [people] to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. and They only like to do the collective thing.

Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it.