It is sad, no doubt, to exhaust one's strength and one's days in cleaving the bosom of this jealous earth, which compels us to wring from it the treasures of its fertility, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread is, at the end of the day's work, the sole recompense and the sole profit attaching to so arduous a toil.

Not to love is to cease to live.

It is sad, no doubt, to exhaust one's strength and one's days in cleaving the bosom of this jealous earth, which compels us to wring from it the treasures of its fertility, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread is, at the end of the day's work, the sole recompense and the sole profit attaching to so arduous a toil.

You see what stupid folk my publishers are; but they are all alike.

I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

One approaches the journey's end. But the end is a goal, not a catastrophe.