No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience.

Many of the men who had come to the wilderness to practice religion appeared to have forgotten its true nature.

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

you could have forgiven my committing a sin if you hadn't feared that I had a committed a pleasure as well.

Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.

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.

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'.