What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

Consequences are unpitying.

There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.