Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.

It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.

The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.

There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.