How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true - the religion that is strength to the healthy - is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive.

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito, having observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation.

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me

The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of the times, a chief obstacle to true culture.

The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.