How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, and they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly.

A pipe for the hour of work; a cigarette for the hour of conception; a cigar for the hour of vacuity.

Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.

Honest winter, snow clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; but that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping loom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honor of May - how often has it robbed me of heart and hope.

The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought.

I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts.

To every man it is decreed: Thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine it.