Life has taught me that the greatest tragedy is not to die too soon but to live too long.

It seems to me that this is the true test for poetry: - that it should go beneath experience, as prose can never do, and awaken an apprehension of things we have never, and can never, know in the actuality.

Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.

I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

I don't like human nature, but I do like human beings.