There was an exquisitely beautiful conception in my brain when I did this piece of work all alone from midnight until morning after the experience of a wonderful day. But I was not able to make the consummation anywhere nearly as beautiful as the inspiration. That, I suppose, is the cry of every heart struggling for self-expression.

What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?

there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used.

Nature always levies her tribute.

It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success.

I know men and women. An honourable man is an honourable man, and a liar is a liar; both are born and not made. One cannot change to the other any more than that same old leopard can change its spots. After a man tells a woman the first untruth of that sort, the others come piling thick, fast, and mountain high.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.